To Be A Magical Boy
by AelysAlthea
Summary: Seamus and Dean met in first year. They were friends. Best friends. The very best of friends, even, and that was how it always would be. The world of magic was a gentle wave and then roiling madness around them, but throughout it all that one thing would never change. From first year to seventh, together or apart, some things were constant.
1. Chapter 1 - First Year

**Summary** : Seamus and Dean met in first year. They were friends. Best friends. The very best of friends, even, and that was how it always would be. The world of magic was a gentle wave and then roiling madness around them, but throughout it all that one thing would never change.

From first year to seventh, together or apart, some things were constant.

 **Rating** : M

 **Tags** : Seamus/Dean, Canon Era, Episodic - across seven books, Coming Out, Homophobia (WARNING for this tag), Friends-to-Lovers, Multiple POV

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A/N: His guys! Just as a heads up that I feel obligated to include, this is a bit of a slow starter and a bit jumpy around but I swear - or at least I hope - that it gets better throughout as the story becomes less of an introduction and more Seamus and Dean's. Similarly, though this chapter is the entirety of the first year from their POV, the chapters do get longer and the years span over several chapter. If you like this pairing, and the writing style doesn't distress you too much, please give it a change. Thank you!

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 **Disclaimer** : This story and all of its characters belong to JK Rowling. I make no profit from this - at all; seriously, none - but hope it's up to scratch anyway!

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 **Chapter 1: First Year**

"I'm half and half. Me dad's a Muggle. Mam didn't tell him she was a witch 'til after they were married. Bit of a nasty shock for him."

The table erupted into laughter and the sandy-haired boy who had spoken in a thick Irish accent broke into a grin at the chorus of amusement he'd elicited. Dean found himself smiling from the seat beside him, scooping another spoonful of pudding and cream into his mouth. He had to pause just for a moment to savour the taste; he didn't know who did the cooking at this school but they were fantastic.

Dean wasn't the only one to appreciate it – even the sandy-haired boy who seemed to be a bit of a chatterbox had paused after his contribution. The dinner with its appearing and disappearing platters, the hall itself with the suspended candles and the night-sky scene overhead, the sea of bubbling students and the table of stately professors at the far end of the room dressed in robes that should have looked out of place and utterly ridiculous except that they didn't. All of it. All of it was captivating.

There was so much to see and so many people to watch that Dean was torn between his dinner and dragging his gaze around himself without pause. The boy on one his other side with vivid red hair who looked like the younger brother of one Gryffindor's self-proclaimed prefects was tucking into his meal with such gusto that Dean thought he might choke himself, but he was grinning throughout it and staring about himself with similarly wide eyes. Two girls from his year who had been appointed Gryffindors just before him were ooh-ing and ahh-ing, their heads tucked together and giggling as though they'd already become fast friends.

Stretching down the length of the table, the rest of his house garbed in the black robes of their uniform with red and gold ties were chattering uproariously amidst their bites so loudly that Dean could hardly hear himself think. A pair of redheaded twins a little way from him in particular were cackling manically and inducing some sort of hysteria in those around them for some joke or other that had their fellow students slapping the table and banging their goblets. They were _actual_ _goblets_ , Dean had realised with jaw-dropping surprise when he'd first seen them, of what appeared to be actual gold. It was so old-fashioned and expensive and _cool_ that Dean had simply held the stem of his own for a long moment before drinking, fascinated and not entirely sure he should be touching what his fellow students handled so carelessly.

The redheaded prefect was engaged in what appeared to be a serious discussion with the bushy-haired girl from Dean year whose name he couldn't remember and he caught words of "magic" and "read in a textbook" that immediately made Dean regret that he hadn't looked more closely at his own books. Smiles spread across every face as though those around him were actually happy to be back at school. And why wouldn't they be? It was a magic school for magic people, magic people that learned _magic_. Even the fellow first year across from Dean, a round faced boy with a perpetual crease of worry in his brow that had earlier mumbled a relieved something of, "Thank Merlin I'm in Gryffindor otherwise my gran would have…" seemed to be enjoying himself.

Merlin. The boy invoked Merlin. Dean still couldn't believe that and yet…

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The thought still made Dean shake his head, even after months of knowing that magic was _really_ _real_. Getting his letter, meeting the Deputy Headmistress Professor McGonagall, visiting the Muggle marketplace of Diagon Alley and everything that followed – he would have thought it all some rather elaborate dream if only it hadn't lasted for so long. Dean considered himself a little but of a sceptic if anything. He'd never been taken with any sort of fantasy and his mother was as much of the embodiment of an atheist as could possibly exist. He'd never believed in such things.

Things certainly had taken a turn when he'd been told he was a wizard. An _actual_ _wizard_.

The sorting ceremony, as Dean had learned it was called, had flowed with practiced efficiency as though it had been conducted many times before. Which it probably had, Dean thought. He hadn't taken the time to do more than flick briefly through most of his textbooks – it had all been rather daunting to behold, and what little he'd read had barely stuck – but he had gleaned the fact that Hogwarts itself was apparently over a thousand years old. A thousand years… Dean didn't think that any school in the entire world could possibly be that old. And this one taught magic.

 _Magic that I'm going to learn_.

That thought itself was wondrous. Who'd have thought? Not Dean, and certainly not his mother, who had contemplated detachedly and in stupefaction the day McGonagall had paid him a visit that perhaps Dean's dad had been a wizard after all. Either that or Dean was a Muggleborn, as they were called. He didn't care which but it would have been nice to know, even if it didn't really change anything all that much.

The feast of the sorting ceremony and the return of students tapered out after what could have been hours as easily as it could have been minutes. With an abrupt disappearance that caused Dean to start slightly – he noticed that the girl with the bushy hair similarly flinched – the pudding disappeared. As if awaiting the absence of food, the headmaster, a stately, elderly man called Dumbledore with an impressively long white beard tucked into his belt, rose to his feet to offer his welcome.

It was a short welcome, barely a speech at all. Short and bubbling with merriment and kindness radiating through the headmaster's half-moon spectacles that Dean could feel even from across the room. It was followed immediately by what was apparently the school song that itself faded into the mournful drawling tones of the red-headed twins that had caused such jovial laughter earlier in the night. Their warbling voices echoed throughout the hall to the general amusement of every student and most of the teachers. Dean found himself exchanging a grin once more with the sandy-haired Irish boy at his side; he couldn't quite remember his name, having lost it somewhere amidst the flurry of other names being exchanged but it hardly seemed to matter. He doubted anything could shake his good humour at that moment.

"Ah, music," Dumbledore finally sighed as the twins finished. He made a show of clapping and wiping at his eyes as though in heartfelt appreciation for a performance. "A magic beyond all we do here! And now, bedtime. Off you trot!"

Giggles still rung through the hall as, in a lurching rise, the entirety of the Great Hall started to their feet to depart for the evening. Dean followed the lead of those around him, eyes drawn to the red-haired prefect as he coaxed the first years after him. Percy, he said his name was; he'd finally managed to detach himself from that bushy-haired girl's clutches. Finding himself falling into step beside the sandy-haired boy, Dean followed Percy's beckoning gestures and trailed from the hall.

The rest of the school was just as impressive as the Entrance Hall and adjacent Great Hall was. Dean clambered up wide stone staircases that apparently 'liked to change', evidence of which he saw and heard of from the startled cries of his fellows as one such staircase dislodged itself from the landing moments after the last of them had hopped from it. Dean stared wide eyed down the endless corridors, gaze raking across the flickering torches in their sconces that served to brightly illuminate every wall and stairwell they ascended, and widened further still when they passed by portraits that actually talked. Moving pictures, as though they were movies. Would the wonders never cease?

Dean would love to show his mother. He could only share an appreciative grin with the boy beside him, but that was nearly good enough.

Apparently such wonders weren't the whole of it, if the brief appearance of a jeering poltergeist called Peeves was any indication. Or at least the sound of one cackling in announcement of his presence, for Dean didn't see it at first. He was only aware of what it was at all for Percy's long-suffering whisper of, "Peeves the poltergeist." Then he raised his voice commandingly. "Peeves, show yourself."

A poltergeist? Dean didn't really know what that was, could only make assumptions, and was still struggling with his initial surprise at glimpsing the ghosts they'd met briefly in the Great Hall. He was hardly prepared for Peeves' arrival when a sound like a balloon being released rebounded down the hallway. An instant later there was a pop and a translucent little man with dark eyes and a leering expression sprung into existence just before their group, legs crossed as he hung suspended in the air. A pair of walking sticks hung from his hands which Dean, in the midst of his renewed awe, didn't quite understand. How was he even holding them? Dean didn't know, knew very little about ghosts and certainly hadn't believed in them before tonight, but maybe poltergeists were the exception to the rule?

"Ooooooh, ickle firsties! What fun!" The poltergeist whooped as it whizzed overhead. Dean couldn't help but duck, and was detachedly relieved that he wasn't the only one; he didn't want to look like the naïve magicless boy that he most certainly was. The sandy-haired boy actually fell to his knees at his side, though he was grinning and giggling more than he appeared to be worried.

"Go away, Peeves, or the Baron'll hear about this," Percy called as the poltergeist made a loop and charged back towards them with mad cackles of 'snip and snap and trip and trap'. "I mean it!"

Dean switched his gaze between Percy and Peeves as the poltergeist slowed to a stop with a visible pout. Only for a moment, however, before he stuck his tongue out and, in a flip of transparent limbs, shot off down the corridor in the opposite direction he'd come with a mocking shriek. "Not the Baron, be kind to poor Peeves-ey. Have a heart!" He disappeared around the corner in a smear of gossamer blue and white, the sound of a distant suit of armour clattering down the hallway.

"You want to watch out for Peeves," Percy informed them as they all straightened. Dean, quite without realising he'd done it, was hauling his unconsciously-dubbed companion to standing once more. Or maybe the boy had simply latched onto him to clamber to his feet – Dean wasn't quite sure which. "The Bloody Baron's the only one who can control him. He won't even listen to us prefects." Then Percy turned and led them onwards.

"Me uncail found a poltergeist in his house one time," the sandy-haired boy stage-whispered at Dean's side, leaning into him as they continued in Percy's wake. Dean glanced towards him and couldn't help but return the smile he was afforded. The other boy positively bubbled with mischief. He had very blue eyes that seemed to glow with merriment. "Right tossers, they are, like. Reckon I could learn how he got rid of it and give it a go?"

Dean thought it might have been a rhetorical question but he shrugged anyway and felt his smile widen as the boy picked up his step in a skip and beckoned him on alongside him. At least Dean wasn't the only one excited; the other boy had said at least half his family was magical and he was still enthusiastic. Maybe the awe and slight intimidation muffled beneath excitement wasn't solely reserved for the non-magical kids? The thought was heartening.

He was distracted as Percy pulled them to a stop with an announcement of, "Here we are." Apparently he'd been leading them to the entrance of what would be their 'Gryffindor Tower', but there was no such entrance that Dean could see, and he did look. Nothing but an enormous picture depicting a very fat and very pinkly-clad woman that smiled benevolently at their approach. Dean exchanged a glance with the boy at his side, raising an eyebrow questioningly, but the boy only offered an exaggerated shrug in reply.

When Percy spoke the words " _Caput Draconis_ ", however, the smiling and waving portrait somehow managed to unhook itself from the wall at one edge and swing open like a door. Dean blinked with almost predictable surprise as he peered over Percy's younger brother's shoulder. Beyond was a short little tunnel spilling out into a room. A room of reds and gold, crackling fireplace and plush crimson couches.

Feeling much like a herded sheep, Dean followed his fellow first years with wide-eyed and turning gaze to suck up every aspect of the room's interior until Percy, leading the way, called them all to attention. He barely listened as they were directed to the first year dormitories, eyes grazing around the circular room of what was very definitely a tower.

"Girls on the left… boys on the right…"

The couches were thick and wide, forming a half-circle around the fizzling fire, each lumped with more pillows than would have made it feasible to sit upon.

"… can find your trunks already at your bed…"

Shelves holding what appeared to be ancient books that bowed the shelves beneath them stretched across the wall opposite the radiant fire. On either side of the entrance into the common room, two wide, cork noticeboards were pegged with little more than a few scraps of paper pinned to each.

"… any troubles and you can approach myself… fellow housemates will always offer a hand…"

The ceiling was tall, the windows long and stretching nearly to the roof, and just the common room itself could surely fit every Gryffindor that had been seated at the table within its walls. Everything was bedecked in red and gold, vibrant and warm and rich, even the tapestries that adorned every inch of wall that wasn't consumed by windows or those moving portraits. Dean immediately decided that he liked it. Red had always been one of his favourite colours.

"… suggest you take yourselves up to your dormitories to settle in. Classes start tomorrow, don't forget."

Dean barely heard Percy's spiel, which he recognised as unusual for himself because he almost always listened to instructions and did what he was told. It was only when the boy he'd had been unconsciously partnered with for the entire trip from the Great Hall made a move with a half-glance in his direction that he called himself to attention and followed his lead up a spiralling staircase, passing into a room with five four-poster beds immaculately made without a glimmer of a crease. They were all draped in red velvet curtains, the theme only seeming to make the room warmer.

Everyone seemed to deflate as soon as they stepped through the door. Dean felt himself sag slightly, as though the excitement of the evening had finally hit him with a blow of weariness when the closing of their dormitory door silenced the distant, animated chatter of his older housemates. Percy's younger brother – Dean abruptly remembered his name was Ron – was already making his way towards one of the beds, checking the trunk that stood propped at the end as though identifying it as his own before flopping onto the mattress alongside. The other boy, the one with the scar on his head who Dean knew was named Harry simply because there seemed to be a whole lot of hype about him, did the same with the bed next to him and the pair fell to murmuring quietly to one another. They'd clearly gotten off to a good start.

The round-faced boy who had mumbled about his gran found his own bed a moment later, leaving only Dean and the sandy-haired boy standing side-by-side just inside the door. Dean cast the shorter boy a glance and they exchanged another smile in a sort of perfunctory manner.

"So, erm," the boy began, scratching the side of his head as though slightly confused. He gestured to the other two spare beds. "Guess those're ours, like?"

Dean shrugged, nodding. The other boy was just making small talk and he – no, that wasn't right. Dean would have to fix that. "Yeah, I guess so. Listen, sorry but I didn't catch your name before." He offered a smile, biting back the touch of sheepishness that accompanied his admission and hoping he hadn't just made an error and put a foot in his mouth. His mum had always taught him to be polite and he didn't know if witches and wizards took more offence to slights like forgetting names.

The other boy didn't appear to take offence in the slightest, however. Instead, he grinned widely in a way that made his vibrant smile seem to take up his whole face. "'S alright. I can't remember yours either." Then he stuck out a hand in a manner that was probably a little bit too adult for an eleven-year-old but Dean responded to in kind all the same, grinning in return. The other boy's smile and open friendliness was sort of infectious. "I'm Seamus Finnigan. Nice to meet you."

Dean nodded his agreement to the sentiment, pumping Seamus' hand eagerly. "You too. I'm Dean. Dean Thomas."

Seamus somehow grinned wider, as though the offer of a name meant something more than Dean perceived it. "Alright, Dean. So long as you're not an ass, like, I'm sure we'll get along just right."

For some reason, despite the backhandedness of the offer of friendship, Dean felt warmed by the sentiment. His first night and he'd already made a friend of sorts. Things were looking up.

* * *

Professor Flitwick was a small, bright and cheery man with a squeaky voice. Dean had heard that apparently he was part-goblin or something, which he found a little disconcerting – goblins in the fairy tales he'd heard growing up were always mean little critters – but Flitwick would probably have to be one of the nicest professors that he'd come across. Certainly nicer than Professor Snape, and far less intimidating than McGonagall.

Two weeks into term and Dean found that he was just starting to ease into the swing of things. Magical displays still caused his eyebrows to rise incredulously at times, but less often than they once had. It was simply that, after seeing some of the things he'd seen in just his first few days at Hogwarts, Dean thought he might be able to imagine anything was possible with magic.

The Charms lesson for that day was their first attempt at casting magic in Flitwick's class. They'd previously just been learning the basics of theory, which Dean supposed might have been interesting except that he didn't really grasp much of it. He certainly lacked the eagerness of that Hermione girl, who seemed to have a quota of questions that she needed to fill every class. Dean was more looking forward to actually practicing magic for the first time. Transfiguration's matchsticks into needles wasn't anything quite so exciting as the Levitation Charm that they would be trying that day.

"Swish and flick," Flitwick repeated for what must have been the hundredth time. "The wand movement is as integral as the incantation. Unless both are conducted appropriately then the spell will not be appropriately performed. Now, once again, repeating after me: _Wingardium Leviosa_."

" _Wingardium Leviosa_ ," Dean parroted alongside the rest of his classmates. The foreign words tangled his tongue slightly and he wasn't sure if he said them properly, but he didn't think he sounded all that different to Seamus and Neville seated on either side of him.

"Splendid," Flitwick squeaked, beaming widely at the class. "Off you go, then."

Dean picked up his wand from the table and turned his attention to the feather that was the only other thing on his desk. He spared a glance towards Seamus at his side, who met his gaze with a shrug.

"So we just, like, do it?" He asked, dropping his gaze back to his feather.

Dean shrugged in turn. "I guess." He peered past Seamus at Harry on his other side, at Ron and Hermione, the latter of who was already staring with focused concentration at her feather as though mentally preparing herself for her spell. He spared another glance for Neville at his other side who eyed his own feather as though he was worried it would bite him, then back to Seamus. "Um… do you want to go first?"

Seamus smiled his wide smile that he seemed unable to drop for long. Dean had become more than familiar with that expression over the past weeks. True to his word, Seamus seemed to have endeavoured to make Dean his friend, a happy coincidence for Dean for he felt the urge to befriend Seamus just as much. Harry and Ron really had become best friends in a very short amount of time and though Neville was nice enough he seemed disinclined to pursue any particular kind of friendship with them. He tended to watch his fellow students as warily as he now did his feather.

Seamus was different. He was a loud person, seeming largely incapable of keeping quiet for too long, and seemed to spout just about every thought that came to his mind. Dean didn't find it as annoying as he would have perhaps suspected he might have. Everyone in Dean's family was fairly quietly spoken, even his youngest sister June who could talk someone's ear of in her whispering voice. Seamus was of a different strain of speech entirely, and Dean actually found he quite liked spending time with the other boy.

Besides that, Seamus seemed largely fearless. Whether it was a by-product of growing up around magic or something innately embedded in his personality, Dean wasn't sure, but for whatever reason he threw himself into whatever spell-casting they were permitted to conduct with vigour and enthusiasm. They hadn't been permitted to try all that much as of yet but when they had Seamus was usually one of the first to make his attempt. He rarely got it right the first time, or even the tenth time, but he never seemed prepared to stop trying.

Just as he was in that moment, his wand raised over his feather and taking a deep breath. " _Wingardium Levio-sah_ ," Seamus incanted with a swish and flick of his wand. It looked a little mangled, but Dean hardly felt it his place to correct him. He wasn't all too good at any of this wand-waving either.

The feather didn't rise but, as Dean had come to suspect was typical of Seamus, he didn't pause and didn't seem deterred in the least before trying again. Dean set about attempting his own spell. Seamus' words rung in his ears, confident even as he too failed.

 _"Wingardium Levio-sah. Wingardium Levio-sah. Wingardium Leviosah."_

To Dean's ears he thought Seamus' words might have been a little mangled too, but he wasn't sure. Instead, he fixed his attention back to his own feather and muttered the incantation.

He tried. And he failed just as anti-climatically as Seamus had. Perhaps fortunately, Seamus' good humour and persistence seemed to shunt any such failures to the side, disregarding them and moving past them. Seamus was good for that, too. He didn't even seem to notice that Dean had failed so much as sparing him another smile as though pleased that he'd made the attempt at all. It was sort of encouraging.

Seamus was good for that too. Dean found the sort-of-encouragement of his new friend to be almost more useful that the formal instructions of his professors.

Dean didn't manage the Levitation Charm. Maybe he would have had he continued with his attempts, just as Hermione managed to barely minutes into the class, but he wasn't sure. He'd never know either, for about halfway through class Seamus exploded.

Or at least his feather exploded. Dean wasn't quite sure how he managed to cause an explosion from a Levitation Charm, but he did. Halfway through his own reattempt at casting, from the corner of his eye he saw Seamus flick his wand perhaps a little too sharply and –

 _Pop-CRACK!_

Shrieks sprung into the air at the same time a plume of smoke erupted from Seamus' feather, enveloping him in a cloud. Dean snapped his attention towards him in time to se a brief burst of flame die and hear Seamus' squawk followed a moment later by a cough. He was stunned for a moment – Dean had never seen a magical _explosion_ before – but as the surprise from his classmates faded into amusement he felt his own shock die and quickly helped his friend to wave the smoke aside.

Seamus looked like he'd rolled in a fireplace. Dark ash sprinkled his hair and smeared his cheeks in a pattern that almost looked like war paint. Dean couldn't help but grin at the sight of it, his smile widening as Seamus met his expression and giggled in turn. "That was so cool!"

"Mr Finnigan, what did you –?"

Swinging his attention towards Flitwick as the little professor hastened across the room, Dean attempted to bite back his smile. At his side, Seamus similarly struggled to adopt an expression of contrition. He didn't quite manage. "Sorry, Professor. I'm not sure what I did, like, but, erm… I think…"

Flickwick tutted but he looked more resigned than worried, accepting rather than frustrated. Dean had to wonder just how many other students had exploded something in his class that he didn't appear the least bit concerned. Shaking his head, Flitwick propped his hands on his hips and sighed. "Well, it's happened before," he said, confirming Dean's suspicions. "Although not quite so early in the term for a first year, I'll have you know. I think you'll be taking yourself to the Hospital Wing now, Mr Finnigan, just in case. I don't want that burn on your chin to become infected."

Dean glanced once more to Seamus, noticing the slight redness on his chin that he hadn't noticed before. Only for his attention to be drawn back to Flitwick when he was addressed directly. "Mr Thomas, could you perhaps accompany him?"

Nodding immediately, Dean rose to his feet as Seamus did. They hastened from the room after Seamus had shared a grin with Harry and Ron. They both looked more admiring of his accidental explosion than concerned.

"That was so cool," Seamus said once more as they reached the relative privacy of the empty corridor, his grin widening once more. He turned his excited smile towards Dean and again Dean couldn't help but grin in return. "I've never intentionally exploded something before."

"Intentionally?" Dean asked, raising an eyebrow.

"With me wand, I mean. I didn't actually mean to blow up me feather, like."

"With your wand?" Dean repeated, frowning slightly in confusion as they turned the corner and hastened in the direction of the Hospital Wing. "You've exploded something without it before?"

Seamus shrugged as though it was hardly consequential. "Yeah. Me first show of accidental magic I blew up me dad's car."

Dean stumbled mid-step before an incredulous laugh burst from his lips. "You blew up your dad's car?'

Seamus nodded, not in the slightest bit repentant. Dean wasn't sure if he admired that or was concerned for the fact; he would have been horrified if he'd blown up his stepdad's car. "Accidental, you know? Still, even though it was an accident this time too, it just felt kind of cooler."

Dean shook his head. He felt another laugh building and couldn't bring himself to withhold it. The two of them spent most of the trip to the Hospital Wing dissolving into laughter, only able to stop when they fell beneath Pomfrey's stern gaze and Seamus had to explain what happened.

Really, Dean considered as he waited near the doors into the hospital while Pomfrey fussed and scolded, Seamus was maybe a little bit insane. But even so, Dean found that he quite liked his new friend.

* * *

"Bloody hell, Seamus, what did you do?"

Glancing up from his lunch, Dean's attention drew to Ron at his exclamation then to Seamus as he made his way along the Gryffindor table to his side. A frown immediately settled on his face and without a word he scooted along the bench a little to make room for him at his side. Seamus flashed him a tight smile before dropping down into the chair next to him.

He looked… well, like he'd been in an explosion of sorts is what it looked like. A smudge of ash streaked across his entire left cheek, some of his eyebrow looked to have been singed, and his blond hair was sticking up oddly, darkened above the grime of his face as though it too hadn't escaped whatever had afflicted him. He looked a mess, which Dean had come to realise was typical of Seamus – he cared little for how he looked and when he dressed in his full uniform at all it was more than likely lacking in an appropriately woven tie. Thankfully, however, he didn't appear gravely injured.

"Did you explode something again?" Ron pressed from across the table, abandoning his lunch momentarily to poke at Seamus for attention. A teasing smile was already spreading across his face. "Seriously? You did, didn't you? You're really bad with that, aren't you?"

Seamus paused in helping himself to the jug of pumpkin juice to spear Ron with a glare. "It's none of your business, Weasley."

"I'm just asking –"

"And I'm just telling, it's none of your _business_." He lowered the jug down onto the table hard enough that it splashed slightly over the lip and Ron, apparently sensing the looming storm, sat back slightly in his seat and raised both hands in placation. Though he spared Seamus one more teasing grin, he didn't speak again and turned back to Harry at his side who himself was engrossed in something in the _Daily Prophet_ spread before him.

That was just the way it was. Ron was best friends with Harry, and had also become friends with Hermione Granger, while Dean was friends with Seamus. Neville tended to drift a little between the two of them, as they weren't exactly exclusive in their friendships – Dean liked the other boys in his dorm and found them all really amiable in different kinds of ways – but that was just how it was. Ron and Harry. Dean and Seamus. And Neville. It was how it worked.

And just as it worked, it also happened that each was rapidly coming to the realisation that of all of them, Seamus was probably the most volatile. Dean, being something of the calmest of the lot of them – though how that had been realised Dean wasn't quite sure – he was usually the most likely to deal with that volatility. Not that Dean minded. Seamus was his friend, after all. He liked him just as much as the other boys. Probably more, for that matter.

Dean watched Seamus silently for a moment out of the corner of his eyes as he resolutely ignored him and everyone else at the table, spooning shepherds pie onto his plate with lips pressed firmly together as though conveying his disinclination to speak to anyone. Dean found himself frowning slightly the longer he watched. It was true that Seamus didn't appear particularly injured, but there was a slight redness to the skin beneath the ashy streak on his face and across the back of his right hand that could have been a mild burn. Again? He'd had trouble with fire magic again?

If Dean had learned something about his best friend of two months it was that he was rather… explosive. When it came to witches and wizards, fire unfortunately just happened to be a by-product of that explosiveness.

"Hey, Seam?"

Seamus ignored Dean for a moment, perhaps pretending that he hadn't heard him. Dean understood his friend well enough after just a short time to know that this was often how he acted in his disgruntlement. Finally, as Dean maintained his own expectant silence, Seamus sighed heavily, lowered his fork from where he'd been poking at but not eating his lunch, and rolled his head towards Dean. His expression was deceptively bland. "What?"

"Do you have any of that cream that Pomfrey gave you last time?"

Seamus blinked silently for a moment before sighing heavily and shaking his head. He seemed to slump slightly, fading from his anger as a hand twitched halfway up to his cheek before dropping back to his fork. "It's up in the dormitory."

"Didn't she say to keep it with you?" Dean asked. "Just in case of emergencies?"

"Yeah. I just forgot it."

There passed a moment of silence between them. Dean didn't point out the obvious, that if so then maybe he could probably try _not_ to forget it. That maybe Seamus could use one of those Rememberall things that Neville had if he was really so forgetful. Which, though Seamus might tease Neville good-naturedly for just like the rest of them in their dormitory, he nearly was. Forgetful, a little clumsy, and a bit of a danger with his wand when it came to spell-casting simply because half the time he exploded something. It had taken him barely half a year for Pomfrey to allot him his very own jar Burn Cream.

Dean watched Seamus for a little longer as he went back to poking at his pie. He didn't seem inclined to continue their discussion, and Dean wouldn't push him. He had a younger half-sister who was like that; irrational when she was disgruntled, or embarrassed, or angry, and she'd never responded well to gentle attempts at peeling down the hastily erected walls that surrounded him. Dean wasn't all that good with calming his sister down – he left that job to his mum – but he knew when to back off.

Instead, Dean tapped his own fork against his half-empty plate briefly before making a decision. With a muttered, "I'll be right back", he climbed backwards off the bench and hastened from the hall, barely sparing a glance behind him at Seamus' call of, "Where are you going?"

Dean returned barely five minutes later and placed the scavenged Burn Cream surreptitiously upon the table at Seamus' side. He didn't glance Seamus' way, didn't breathe a word of suggestion or to indicate what he'd done, but instead picked up his fork and continued eating his own lunch. He could feel Seamus turn his attention towards the jar, up to Dean, then down to the jar again.

A long moment of pause passed before Seamus finally spoke. "Thanks," he mumbled.

That was all. Just that one word, and without even a touch of anger to it. But from the corner of his eyes, as Dean watched Seamus slip the jar into his pocket, presumably to use later, he saw him smile slightly. Such a simple thing and Seamus was all better again.

Dean's mum always carried Band-Aids and hand cream around in her purse with her everywhere. Maybe Dean should start doing the same thing?

* * *

As soon as they stepped out of the Pomfrey's hospital, Seamus released a heavy, exasperated sigh. Dean glanced towards him, feeling a smile spread across his face at the shaking head, the rolling eyes and the pompous world-weariness. "What?" He asked.

"Honestly," Seamus said emphatically. "He looks like he's gone and tried to explode himself, like."

"So just like you do, then?"

Seamus frowned at him but it was without any real heat and Dean found his grin widening. "Shut up, Thomas," he said. The smile he couldn't seem to contain a moment later went quite a ways to dampening the supposed harshness of his words.

Dean laughed as they turned to make their way down the corridor and back to Gryffindor Tower. It was just the two of them, with Ron and Hermione remaining in the Hospital Wing alongside Harry, and Neville having already visited that morning. It was the first time that they'd been to see Harry after the – after whatever had happened in the depths of the school had sent him into Pomfrey's care. Rumour had it that the fabled He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, a being of terror and power that Dean had heard more than enough about over the past year to be wary if not fearful of, had attacked him and Harry had fought him off. At least that was the story that was circulating through the rumour mill.

Really, if it had been anyone else, Dean would have been a bit sceptical that they would manage to face an apparently almighty Dark Wizard who was _supposed_ to have been dead ten years ago but somehow just wasn't for a brief moment. Except that this was Harry, and Harry wasn't really the sort of person to lie about that sort of thing. He hadn't disputed any of the stories that Seamus had put to him in their meeting, and though Dean knew Ron was prone to exaggerations, Hermione wasn't and she had agreed with Harry's unspoken tale too.

Overall, the thought, the entire situation, was more than a little terrifying. Was it normal for witches and wizards? Could they do that, coming briefly back to life after they'd died? Dean had become acclimatised to the reality of ghosts and poltergeists, had heard tales of creatures called Inferi that sounded like nothing if not zombies to him, but coming back from the dead after a decade? That sounded a little far-fetched, not to mention horrifying.

Except that it could be, and likely even was, the truth. For really, what else could have caused Harry to end up like _that_ in the Hospital Wing? They were in a bloody school after all, and even with the added element of magic Dean didn't think things like that just happened. Students didn't just up and injure themselves like _that._

It was perhaps a good thing that, though Seamus had expressed his own open fear for the situation that Harry, Ron and Hermione had unwittingly presented to him, he'd bounced back quickly enough. He distracted Dean from his own nervous thoughts. Seamus was nothing if not resilient in just about every way, and he demonstrated that resilience as he chattered away at Dean's side, tongue flapping at a hundred miles a minute.

"Really, of course it would be Harry that it would happen to, right? I mean, he's always charging into things like that, isn't he, like?"

"How do you mean?" Dean asked.

Seamus shrugged. "Well, it's like with the whole thing in our first flying lesson, when he flew even though Hooch told us not to. Or in the actual quidditch game when he nearly fell off his broom, like. Or what about with the troll, what happened with Hermione and everything? Or with their detention, like – you know, they didn't actually tell me, but I overheard Ron saying about how the dragon they sent off just got to his brother Charles or something or other." Seamus raised an eyebrow expectantly. "Well?"

Dean blinked at that. He hadn't heard anything about a dragon, but Seamus had more of an ear for gossip than he did. Besides, when it was all spread out before him like that, Dean had to admit that Seamus was right and Harry – and Ron and Hermione for that matter – did seem to get themselves into a fix or two more often then everyone else did.

"You're probably right," he admitted, nodding.

"Too right I am," Seamus said with a sharp nod of his own head. "They're all high – high _maintenance_ is what I reckon."

"High maintenance?"

"Too right. I'm glad I picked you to be my best friend, Dean. You're not crazy like they are."

Dean fully turned his head towards Seamus as they continued down the corridor. There was almost a criticism in his words, and perhaps it was a little cruel to Harry, Ron and Hermione. But even so, Dean couldn't help but let the flood of warmth elicited rise within him. "You 'picked me' to be your friend?" He asked, because to him it had seemed more like circumstance that they became so close while Harry and Ron had their own friendship and Neville seemed nothing if not hesitant to befriend anyone.

Seamus missed the touch of sarcasm in Dean's words and nodded firmly. "Yep, and I'm happy for that, like." He bumped his shoulder into Dean's as they walked, flashing him his usual wide grin. "So don't you go acting like a crazed loon too, alright?"

Dean chuckled but otherwise only nodded his head in agreement. It was backhanded affection following Seamus' backhanded compliment, but for some reason it still felt kind of nice. Dean had never had a friend quite as close to him as he was to Seamus before – to be expected, really, considering that he'd never been to boarding school before and had to spend almost every minute of every day alongside the same four boys. He didn't think he'd be able to suffer such persistent company even with his oldest sister, Millie, and he got on the best with her out of all of his half-siblings.

For some reason it wasn't like that with Seamus. More he than the other boys because, Seamus-proclaimed 'best friends' as they were, they tended to spend the most time together. And though he felt a little guilty for thinking it, Dean couldn't help but agree with Seamus' words.

He was glad that he'd been picked too.


	2. Chapter 2 - Second Year

**Chapter 2: Second Year**

"About time you got here!"

Seamus crashed bodily into Dean, flinging himself on top of his friend and wrapping him in what was perhaps a bit of an excessive embrace. He didn't care. If anything, the thoughts that arose were of excitement that Dean had _finally_ arrived at Kings Cross and amusement at the heavy grunt that he heaved as Seamus knocked the wind out of him. Luckily – or perhaps unluckily, Seamus wasn't sure, because it would have been funny otherwise – Dean managed to retain his balance after a brief stumble, holding them both up.

When he did right himself, it was to meet Seamus' gaze with a grin spreading across his face. "Hey, Seam, how's it -?"

"You know the train is about to leave any second now, like?" Seamus interrupted him, before glancing over his friend's shoulder. He raised a hand to wave at the woman who stood behind Dean, standing alongside her son's trunk with a fond smile upon her face. "Hi, Mrs Thomas."

Mrs Thomas raised her hand to wave in a reply greeting. "Hello, Seamus. It's lovely to see you again."

"Yeah, you too." Seamus nodded, beaming up at her. He liked Mrs Thomas, had liked her as soon as he'd met her the one and only time he'd visited Dean over the summer break. She wasn't a small woman, was tall and the spitting image of Dean, from her warm, dark eyes to her perfectly symmetrical smile and stunningly white teeth beneath. She was also incredibly kind, calm and quietly spoken. Basically, if Seamus were to consider Dean to grow up into a woman, thirty years down the track it would be his mum he'd see. Which… might have been a strange thing for him to think but it was true nonetheless.

"Is the train really about to leave?" Mrs Thomas asked, glancing down at the delicate gold watch on her wrist before raising her gaze towards Seamus once more. "I thought it left at eleven o'clock."

"Yeah, it does," Seamus said.

"Seam, it's only ten forty-five," Dean laughed. "We've still got ages."

Seamus turned back to him with a heavy sigh and rolled his eyes. "Yeah, but if you leave it till the last minute, like, then you won't get a proper seat. Maybe Ron and Harry and Neville and all of them have already got a cabin but you never can be too sure. Especially not when it comes to Weasley, like. He's probably not even here yet."

"Is Ron's partial to being late?" Mrs Thomas asked with a widening of her smile. Somehow she made her question seem not harsh, demeaning or patronising in the slightest.

"Ron just tends to sleep in a bit," Dean explained.

" _Always_ ," Seamus emphasised, shaking his head sagely. "We had to drag him out of his bed more than once last year, didn't we, Dean?"

Dean nodded, smirking slightly. "It's not like it's a bad thing, though, sleeping in. Not everyone wakes up exactly on seven o'clock every morning like you do."

"Well, it's wasting the morning if you don't, like. Besides, it's not like I could sleep in if I tried."

"Then that's sort of the same thing as Ron not being able to wake up earlier, isn't it?"

"How is that the same thing, exactly?"

"I mean he's not doing it on purpose."

"What, so you reckon sleeping for more than twelve hours every night is supposed to be normal?"

Before Dean could reply, Mrs Thomas interrupted them. "I'm sure it's not a problem, but it's a good thing he has both of you to make sure he isn't late for his classes." She spared a smile for Seamus that seemed to request one in return. Seamus easily obliged as she turned back to Dean. Stepping forwards, she wrapped an arm around his shoulder and planted a kiss on his cheek. Dean grimaced slightly but didn't pull away as Seamus had done with his own mum not ten minutes before.

When she released him, it was to turn him around and place both hands on his shoulders. "But maybe Seamus is right. You don't want to miss getting a seat."

Dean shrugged. "I don't mind sharing a cabin with someone else."

"Even first years?" Seamus asked, raising an eyebrow.

Dean spared him a roll of his eyes that wasn't quite as disgruntled as he likely intended it to be. "You know, we were first years just last year. They're not that much younger than us."

"Still, younger is annoying, like. I've got heaps of younger cousins. _All_ of them are annoying."

Mrs Thomas chuckled quietly. It was almost exactly the same laugh as Dean's to the point that if it hadn't been such a nice laugh it would have been unnerving. "Well, then, I won't keep you." Then she patted Dean's shoulder and turned him around, dragging his trunk towards him to urge him on his away.

Dean spared a moment to give his own farewell in return, promising that yes, he'd do his homework, no, he wouldn't get into trouble and yes, he'd write every week. Then he followed Seamus as he led the way towards the train, bypassing Seamus' trunk that Seamus had momentarily abandoned to launch himself at Dean moments before.

Seamus was already spilling forth every thought that rose in his mind before they'd even climbed from the platform, pausing only briefly for Dean to wave goodbye to Mrs Thomas. Seamus spared an even briefer wave to his own distracted parents a sea of people away. Then they were aboard and trundling along the narrow hallway within.

Seamus and Dean had exchanged letters over the holidays. Of course they had; Seamus didn't think he could go the entire holidays without knowing what his best friend was doing. He'd never had a friend like Dean before. In his hometown a whole country and St. George's Channel away, he'd had friends and more cousins than he cared to count, not to mention an older brother that, though he loved him more than anyone else in the world, was a full ten years older and so more of an adult than a fellow kid. Yet all of those potential and actual friends – most of whom were home-schooled in the more traditional pureblood manner –weren't quite as close as he and Dean had become in just a year.

It had been weeks since they'd met up, and Seamus found the time and distance thoroughly dissatisfying. According to his mum, the holidays were family time that he was supposed to spend with _family_. A very large, very loud and very opinionated family that though Seamus did love grew very tiresome after weeks of overexposure. Unfortunately, when Seamus' mum put her foot down there was no getting around her; she was as stubborn as a mule knee-deep in mud. He'd only managed to visit Dean in London the once and only because his older cousin Caitlin had been visiting the city so he travelled alongside her. Dean hadn't been able to come back as he would have had to make the trip himself, and by Muggle ferry or plane at that. Apparently his mum and stepdad didn't feel comfortable with that.

Seamus could understand that. Really, he could. It didn't stop him from grumbling about it, though.

So quite without his consent yet entirely satisfactorily, Seamus found himself talking Dean's ear off. Dean himself wasn't necessarily a quite person but even Seamus realised in the midst of his own talking that he would have struggled to get a word in edgewise for how much he was talking.

"… and Aimee's dead awful at quidditch, like – she's more of the book kind of person, you know? – but me mam said that if me and Connor wanted to play that we had to take her with us." Seamus wrinkled his nose. "It wasn't so bad, I guess. We just put her in Keeper and she seemed happy enough, though I don't know how she managed to sit on her broom and read a book at the same time, like."

Dean snickered. "She must be pretty talented then."

"Hm. In a way, like. That, or she's crazy. Who would want to read over playing quidditch?"

Dean gave a non-committal shrug, but Seamus knew that in spite of that he was of a like mind. Though essentially Muggleborn – and possibly entirely as Dean didn't know for sure – and never having heard quidditch before, he seemed to have taken a liking to the sport since he'd started at Hogwarts. Before that he'd apparently been more interested in Muggle football, which, though Seamus was familiar with from his own father, was hardly of the same strain as quidditch.

Before he could continue, however, Dean paused in step and made a gesture to the cabin at there side. "Here."

Seamus glanced in the direction he pointed and immediately adopted a smile as he stepped up to the cabin and slid open the door. Within, Neville and Hermione turned towards him with curiosity that faded into welcome, alongside –

"Who are you?" Seamus asked curiously, blinking down at the plain-faced, blonde-haired girl at Hermione's side. The girl's eyes widened slightly before a slightly amused smile grew upon her lips.

Before she could get a word in, however, Hermione was speaking up with an exasperated sigh. "This is Hannah, Seamus. She's in our year, in Hufflepuff. Surely you remember her."

"Really? She's in our year?" Seamus turned back to the girl – to Hannah – and slowly nodded. "Oh, right. Yeah, I guess you do look familiar, like. Sorry, I don't think I've ever actually spoken to you before."

"That's fine," Hannah said with a shrug. "It happens. I think I've just got one of those forgetful faces, you know?" The way she said it made it sound as though she'd learned the words by rote, having said them before even if they did seem too mature for her.

Seamus shook his head. "Not really. At least, I don't think so, like. I'm just stupid like that." He flashed Hannah a slightly rueful grin which only widened her own smile. "Still, better that you're in our year than being a first year. Although... well, I guess even if you were that's cool too, like. No harm in first years."

As Hannah nodded, Dean bustled into the cabin after Seamus with a grunt. "Weren't you just complaining about first year two seconds ago?"

"Maybe. I guess they're not all that bad, though." Seamus shrugged once more, heaving his trunk to stow overhead before taking the seat next to Hannah. Really, he didn't have all that much of a problem with first years. It was more that he was simply running his mouth, he knew. His dad always said he had his mum's gift of the gab.

"Well, you changed your mind quickly," Dean said, plopping down across from him after he wedged his own trunk above himself before turning towards Hermione. "Where's Harry and Ron, by the way?"

Hermione only shrugged, unconcerned. "Probably just late. Ron's kind of like that."

"We know," Seamus and Dean said in synchrony. They exchanged a grin before each settling themselves back into their seats to share stories of the summer.

* * *

The first duelling club was several weeks into term. Personally, Seamus couldn't have been happier for the fact. It was _exciting_ , and sure, Lockhart was an absolute tosser, but if he could do even some of what he'd said he apparently could in his books then Seamus was _dying_ to see it.

His housemates were too, if for somewhat different reasons.

"He's an absolute idiot," Ron muttered as they made their way down to the Great Hall for the first meeting alongside most of the rest of Gryffindor house. "I doubt he even knows which end of his wand he's supposed to hold."

"I doubt he actually even did most of the stuff that he says he has," Harry added from Seamus' side

Ron nodded his agreement. "Yeah. Absolute idiot."

Seamus couldn't help but agree with the sentiment, though he did sort of admire the possibility of anyone pursuing acts of greatness. Even so, his mouth was running away from him before he could help himself. "An idiot like someone in particular who drove their dad's flying car into the Whomping Willow, like?"

Both Ron and Harry turned a scowl of varying degrees of intensity onto Seamus, who only grinned in response. It was fun prodding his dorm-mates, even if he had grown tired of doing so with any sincerity over the past weeks. Ron reached around Harry and shoved Seamus' shoulder for extra measure. "Will you let it go already?"

Seamus shook his head. There was no way he was going to let either of them forget what both had admitted to being their own foolishness. He glanced at Dean who was fighting to contain his own grin; at least he had one comrade in arms for his teasing. Or two, really, though Hermione was less open about it and agreed with him less to tease and more to chide. The roll of her eyes but slight nod of her head on Ron's other side spoke for her.

Stepping into the Great Hall, they all paused momentarily. The four tables had been shunted to the walls, cleared into an open arena that countless students were already milling around in. Lockhart, strutting around like a peacock in formal duelling robes, was talking expansively to a bunch of fifth year girls who looked entirely in his thrall. Though Seamus could admit that he looked rather dashing in the robes, he shook his head alongside his friends' snorts and mutters as the professor shone a sparkling grin onto the wide-eyed girls before turning and flouncing away. He really was a tosser.

Still, at least he was better than Snape across the room. The Potions professor seemed to be hanging suspended in a dark cloud of foreboding, scowling and glaring at any and all who looked at him sideways. Seamus considered he'd prefer any open and enthusiastic airhead to the silent and looming wraith that was Snape. He made sure to subtly urge his friends away from the scowling professor, though they didn't need all that much prompting.

Stopping along one of the walls just as Lockhart began to herd the entirety of the attending students into a like-minded position, Seamus turned to Dean at his side. "So, like, how is this duelling thing supposed to work? Is Lockhart going to give a demonstration or what?"

Dean shrugged. "Maybe. Though since it's Lockhart he'll probably just prance around for a bit and wave his wand around without actually casting."

Seamus snickered. "True. I wonder if he can do all the stuff he says he's done?"

"Unlikely. With how often he leaves us to it in class I doubt he when knows how to cast a Levitation Charm."

"Well, he does have that book on how he faced those trolls, like, and you know what Ron always says about Levitation Charms and trolls."

"Have you read the book?"

Seamus snorted. "No. 'Course not. Have you?"

Dean snorted in turn. "What do you take me for?"

Their discussion was cut short by Lockhart flouncing into the centre of the room, robes fluttering behind him like a windswept cape. He sparkled his smile around at them in a beaming sweep that made Seamus cringe for its brightness. Sure, he could admire another wizard who looked like they'd stepped from a storybook, perfect hair and glowing countenance and all, but Lockhart really was ridiculous.

"Now, Professor Dumbledore has granted me permission to start this little duelling club, to train you all in case you ever need to defend yourselves as I myself have done on countless occasions - for full details, see my published works."

He paused for a second round of smiling to the returning smiles of many of the girls and the muffled snorts and eye rolls from Seamus and most of the boys. Seamus and Dean exchanged another glance as he continued and launched himself into action.

What followed must to have been one of the most amusing and embarrassing displays that Seamus had ever seen. Lockhart duelled Snape. In a demonstration, he'd called it, but when he'd actually duelled him… if Seamus had cause to doubt Lockhart's integrity before, after seeing that he was almost certain that the Defence professor was full of shit.

To the sound of gasps from many of the students as Snape blasted Lockhart across the room, Seamus turned his wide eyes towards Dean. "He's absolutely pathetic, like."

Dean smirked, drawing his gaze from where Lockhart was clambering with an attempt at grace to his feet. He didn't manage quite so well as his peacock strutting of minutes before. "Do you think he'll try again?"

"He surely couldn't not." Seamus shook his head, glancing back to Lockhart. "That was just embarrassing. Like, he'll have to try to make up for it, surely."

Lockhart didn't. He didn't try. Seamus wondered if he was simply that useless that he wouldn't try again and risk failure or if he believed his own words and thought that a 'practical approach' would be better for the students to learn. Learn. Ha.

Instead, they were told to divide into pairs and practice duelling for themselves. Seamus immediately turned towards Dean, who looked expectantly to him in turn, but before they could even voice their requests at partnership Lockhart was sweeping around the room and pairing them up himself. Seamus found himself with Ron while Dean was lobbed in with a kid called Wayne Hopkins from Hufflepuff that Seamus had only met because he was friends with Hannah.

Seamus scowled at Lockhart's back as he drew away. "Well, this sucks."

Dean nodded in grumbling agreement, a sentiment that appeared to be mirrored not only him but Harry – who, the poor sod, was paired with Malfoy – and Hermione, who looked thoroughly disconcerted to be shunted towards the big Slytherin girl who Seamus was pretty sure was called Bulstrode. She looked like she chewed nails for breakfast. Still, all things considered, Seamus was sort of grateful that at least he was paired with Ron; they appeared to be the only two in their house who were actually paired together.

At least he was until, as he and the rest of the students spread out in the room with their assigned partners, he noticed Ron extracting his wand. "Oh, bloody hell. I forgot you broke your wand. You're not going to kill me with one of your unexpected hexes, like, are you?"

Ron frowned, though he appeared sheepishly in agreement with Seamus' words. "I don't think so?"

"I don't want to die. I'm too young to die."

"Shut up, Seamus. I'm not going to kill you." The unspoken 'try' was apparent in his voice as Ron shifted awkwardly, a little worriedly. "And how the hell did you forget I broke my wand when you always seem to remember _how_ it was broken with the Willow and everything."

"My head's filled with the important stuff, Weasley," Seamus said.

"So me breaking my wand isn't important?"

"Well, it is now."

Their exchange was cut short by Lockhart's resounding voice as he called for their attention. With a few short words and another plastic smile – he appeared to have recovered from his momentary embarrassment faster than his sympathetic onlookers had – he urged them into their duelling stances with an enthusiastic, "Alright! Off you go". No directions were given. That was simply it.

Seamus turned back towards Ron where he was adjusting the bent length of his wand patched in too much Spell-o-tape. _God, I'm going to die,_ he thought in horror. _I'm definitely, definitely going to die._ Instead of saying as much, however, with only a brief glance around himself at Harry and Malfoy – already scowling at one another – and Dean and Wayne – who seemed to be at a bit of a loss of how to proceed – he cleared his throat. "Alright, Ron. Let's go then."

It was all a bit pompous and formulaic with the whole bowing thing, Seamus considered, but he followed Ron's lead as he in turn followed what he remembered of the opening to the Lockhart-Snape duel that hardly even warranted the term. Turning in step and striding away from one another, Seamus turned at what he considered the correct number of steps and raised his wand towards Ron.

"So do we, like…?"

Ron shrugged, raising his own wand. "I guess. On three? One… two… um… three?"

" _Titillanto_!" Seamus cried the moment Ron had finished speaking, sweeping his hand in a tight arc and sending the hex flying in a burst of purple light. Ron had a split second for his face to slip into surprise before he was struck. Then he was on the floor, rolling on his back and clutching his belly as he writhed with laughter beneath the Tickling Hex.

Seamus grinned. Maybe he should have paused just a second longer to allow Ron more time, but there was no harm done. Seamus knew a fair number of hexes – growing up with Fergus and his older brother Dillon as cousins, he'd picked up a fair few – but it wasn't like he wanted to hurt Ron. Duelling sounded cool and all but he didn't really want to hurt anybody.

Watching Ron wriggle on the ground for a moment, he allowed the hex to continue only until Ron started pleading in garbled stutters. "Seam – please, can – can you make it – Seamus, _make it stop_!"

Seamus wasn't cruel enough to allow the torture to continue when his opponent cried mercy. With a wave of his wand and a quick " _Finite_ ", Ron sagged to the ground, panting with arms still clutching his belly. After a moment he managed to clamber back to his feet. His cheeks were flushed in ruddy splodges and though he looked faintly accusing he was still smiling good-naturedly enough.

"I didn't know you could do the Tickling Hex," he said, brushing down the front of his robes and readjusting his stance. "Is it hard?"

Seamus shrugged. "Not really."

"Alright then, can I have a go?"

"If you can get a shot in, yeah."

"Are you taunting me, Finnigan?" Ron said, raising an eyebrow alongside his rising wand.

Seamus grinned. "Maybe just a little."

They didn't bother with the formalities again as, from a glimpse around himself, Seamus saw that most of his fellow students weren't. The entirety of the 'duelling club' seemed to have deteriorated into students simply revelling in the chance to hex one another. Seamus couldn't really blame them; he was just as enthusiastic. Instead, both he and Ron counted down this time before diving back into the supposed 'duelling'.

Ron shot a purple hex at Seamus, which he sidestepped so closely that he swore he felt an echoing shadow of the tickle. Seamus launched another hex right back at him with a cry of " _Steleus_!" that sent Ron into a series of explosive sneezes and Seamus laughing just as explosively in response. He ended it just before Ron launched another spell.

This one struck. It struck and immediately Seamus felt the urge to puke. The smile slid from his face but he hardly noticed and he only just managed to retain his hold on his wand as he clutched at his belly. His knees felt suddenly turned to jelly as he bent double.

"Oh, shit! Bloody hell, I'm sorry, Seamus, it was supposed to be a Tickling Charm and I –" Ron hastened across the room towards him, hand dropping to Seamus' shoulder where he was bent nearly to the floor and struggling with his rising gorge. _Not good, gonna puke, gonna puke…_

"I'm sorry, are you – are you okay? You look like you're gonna puke."

Seamus turned an attempt at a glare up towards Ron. Really, Ron? He looked like he was going to disgorge his stomach? Well, by golly, he was glad that it _looked_ as bad as it felt. It would be completely unjust if he didn't look as sick as he suddenly felt.

"What… the hell… did you…?" Seamus managed to stutter out before he had to clap a hand over his mouth, squeezing his eyes closed to withhold the uncontrollable urge to paint his shoes with his half-digested dinner. He bent down further, sinking onto his haunches.

"It's okay, I – I mean, I'm sorry, but I'll – I've got this!"

Seamus only had time to snap his eyes open, to see Ron point his wand at him again and stutter " _Finite_!" He would have told Ron to _not_ , to keep his wand _away_ from him because what kind of a wand cast a Tickling Charm like this? Blessedly enough, however, the counter-charm actually worked and an instant later Seamus sagged to his knees as the roiling in his gut eased.

"Shit, I'm really sorry about that, Seamus, I'm really, really sorry, I –"

"What happened?"

Glancing up, Seamus saw Dean and Wayne wandering slowly towards them. Or slowly at first, then with increasing speed as they seemed to realise something was wrong. The duelling appeared to have been momentarily ceased by a _Finite Incantatum_ from Snape, with Lockhart sweeping through the students spaced across the room and, with a tap on the shoulder and his plastic smile, drawing them to a pause that they had already assumed. The curiosity on Dean's face was quickly replaced by a frown and rising concern as he hastened to Seamus' side and dropped to a squat. "What happened to you? You look like you're going to pass out."

"Well, at least I don't look like I'm going to puke anymore," Seamus managed. His voice sounded strained, almost a croak. Ron shifted awkwardly, muttering another apology beside him.

"Do you think we should go to the hospital wing?" Dean suggested.

Seamus only shook his head. He still felt unwell but he thought the feeling from whatever unhinged spell Ron had cast was fading. Besides, he didn't want to miss the rest of the duelling lesson, even if it was a pathetic excuse for one. "No, I'm fine. I'm good."

Taking Dean's proffered hand, he rose to his feet and turned back towards the room at large. Most of the students had halted in their duelling, though Bulstrode appeared to have captured Hermione in an unshakeable headlock that Snape not four feet away was resolutely ignoring. Another Slytherin girl with the dark hair who Seamus was almost certain was from their year tripped Neville onto his backside even as Seamus watched. He wasn't sure if it was with a spell or a well-aimed kick.

It was, by and large, a disastrous first attempt all around. Seamus muttered as much to Dean, who was still looking at him with a touch of concern. He appeared to shake himself out of it a moment later, however, as he replied. "Yeah, well, what did you expect? We have Lockhart as a teacher and only Snape to rein him in."

Seamus could only agree. "At least we know that it probably can't get much worse, like."

Unfortunately, Seamus had spoken too soon. It didn't get worse for _him_ , for Seamus resolutely refused to participate in any more duelling with Ron and Ron seemed hesitant to do so anyway. But still, even without any more casualties on his part, the rest of the lesson couldn't be deemed tame. Not when Malfoy conjured the snake and flung it at Harry. Not when the snake went for Finch-Fletchley, the loud-mouthed Hufflepuff boy, and Harry spoke in _Parseltongue_ to it. No one could have expected that, least of all Seamus. The snake stopped in its tracks long enough for Snape to blast it into oblivion, but Seamus could hear the whispers around him, the mounting fear as to Harry's actions.

As if things weren't bad enough. The school was already a little unhinged, what with the Petrification of that first year Colin Creevy kid. Seamus had been quite happy trying not to think about that for the night. Something simply _had_ to have gone worse.

The duelling lesson quickly wrapped up after that. Harry took off as though the whispers erupting behind him and chasing his tail where charging bicorns, Ron and Hermione disappearing after him. With the rapid and unnerved cessation of the duelling lesson, Seamus fell into step beside Dean and Neville and they made their way back to Gryffindor Tower. Seamus was feeling better after his bout of nausea had passed, though Neville had still commented that he looked pale. That wellness had abruptly been dampened.

"So he's… Parseltongue, right?" Dean asked, testing the word out as if for the first time.

Seamus nodded. He sometimes forgot that Dean didn't know some of the things that most witches and wizards simply understood. "Yeah. He can talk to snakes."

"And that's a bad thing?"

"I think it's probably just that people will think he's the heir of Slytherin or something," Neville said, shrugging awkwardly. "I mean, it was supposed to be Slytherin's gift and no one but – but _You-Know-Who_ has been known to have it for centuries."

Dean winced slightly. "Jeez. That sucks. He's really going to get it, isn't he?"

Seamus nodded his agreement. "It's all a load of bollocks, though, like."

"You think so?" Neville asked, leaning around Dean as they both glanced towards him.

Seamus nodded shortly once more. "Of course it is. We've known Harry for, like, a whole year now? Do you really think he'd be evil or whatever? Especially after what happened at the end of last year."

Neville's face cleared a little of the frown he'd been wearing. He appeared suddenly relieved, as though Seamus' words had been reassuring. Really, though, wasn't it obvious? It seemed sort of obvious to Seamus. This was Harry, after all. Harry wasn't evil, surely.

Dean was smiling at him, nodding his own agreement. "Yeah. You're right. You _are_ right, Seamus."

Seamus stared at him for a moment and wondered at the tone in Dean's voice. It sounded happy, almost… proud?

Whatever. He discarded it as he picked up his pace towards the Gryffindor common room.

* * *

"Thanks for that heaps, Hannah. I'm dead awful at Potions, like."

Hannah smiled warmly and Seamus wondered not for the first time how he had initially thought she was plain. It was true that her features might have been average, and nothing in particular would stand out at a passing glance, but when she smiled Seamus was left with the a warm, fuzzy feeling that he likened to that he was felt receiving similar from his older brother. It was comforting.

"No worries," Hannah said, accepting the thanks with a wave of her hand. "I think it's probably harder for you guys because you're in Potions with the Slytherins. I don't think Snape's quite as mean to us because it's just us Hufflepuffs with the Ravenclaws."

Seamus shrugged. "Still. Thanks anyway." He rose from where he'd momentarily taken a seat at the Hufflepuff table to talk to Hannah, wedged between she and Wayne with his Potions homework spread before him. Both Hufflepuffs had been surprisingly eager to offer their assistance. In their previous year Seamus hadn't ever had much to do with them save to share some classes with them, and not since his train trip alongside them both and their friend Susan at the beginning of the school year had he actually spoken to them. But they were both really almost unbelievably friendly and though Seamus wasn't really the sort of person to go and sit at another house's table, he made an exception this once. How could he not when Hannah had so kindly offered her assistance at overhearing his Potions distress?

"Any time you wanted to study together or anything, Seamus, we'll be more than happy to, you know," Hannah offered as he climbed over the back of the bench. "I know you said you don't usually like to but…"

Juggling his books, parchments and quills, Seamus flashed both Hannah and the quietly observant Wayne a smile. "Thanks. I'll keep it in mind. Dean says he's alright to do it himself and that Potions is just following a recipe, like, but he's just as bad as me. Maybe he'll come along?"

"Sure thing," Hannah nodded, waving once more as he turned to start from the Hall in search of Dean. He'd told him that he was going to talk to Hannah, to take her up on her offer to help because he had absolutely _no_ idea about how to tackle their latest essay. Dean had scrunched up his nose and told him he'd see him later, that he was thinking of maybe going outside to fly a bit even if it was absolutely freezing.

Which was entirely stupid, but Seamus would admit he was tempted to join him.

As he passed through the corridors on his way back to Gryffindor Tower, however, thoughts of quidditch quickly left his mind. The first indication that something was wrong was when he saw McGonagall stride in a near run past him; she didn't even seem to notice he was there and Seamus was left frowning after her with the memory of her tightened expression and the wrinkles on her brow severely pronounced.

Then he'd seen the horde of whispering third year Gryffindor students, more openly worried than McGonagall. Then he saw Parvati and Lavender disappear around the distant corner at a near run, eyes blown wide. Something seemed… off.

It wasn't until Seamus, distracted with a glance over his shoulder at the sound of a shout echoing down the corridor, bumped into the pair of Hufflepuff fourth year boys that he knew something was really wrong. The Hufflepuffs started slightly at the sight of him a moment before their expressions fell into identical masks of sympathy. That in itself was terrifying.

"Hey, listen, we're sorry about it all, mate," one of the boys said.

The other nodded his sympathetic agreement. "Yeah. Seriously. Not only did you Gryffindors have one person in your house petrified already but another one, too? I wonder if whoever's doing it has a thing for attacking younger Gryffindors. First a first year, then a second year…"

The boys continued to talk but Seamus didn't hear what they said after that. Their words morphed in his ears as he felt his eyes widen. Petrified? Another one? And worse than that, a second year?

Seamus didn't know why he thought it. He didn't have any support for his supposition. But regardless, his mind immediately flashed to Dean. Dean, who had been by himself, who had gone _outside_ by himself, and just when another person had been Petrified and…

What if it was Dean?

Seamus ploughed through the Hufflepuff boys in his sudden burst of speed, leaving their startled cries and calls of, "Hey!" behind him. He knew he dropped a quill and a piece of parchment but he didn't care; it could have been his hastily drafted Potions essay and he wouldn't have turned back for it.

Instead, he ran as though a Sprinting Charm had been affixed to his feet and practically flew back to Gryffindor Tower. Thoughts of his friend, of the possibility of his friend being Petrified because he'd been alone, because Seamus hadn't been with him –

It made him feel sick to his stomach, and only drove him faster.

So fast that, when he sped towards the portrait of the Fat Lady, he couldn't stop himself from crashing into the person exiting the common room and sent them both tumbling head over heels back through the porthole. Seamus knocked his head on the person's chin, thought he might have twisted an ankle and the books he'd still been holding scattered every which way, but he hardly cared. He was scrambling in an attempt to right himself immediately until –

"What the -? Seam, what the hell are you doing?"

Pausing in righting himself, Seamus glanced down at the person squashed beneath him, the soft, squishy person pillowed by excessive overcoats as though preparing to go outside. When he did, he gushed with a sigh of relief, such profound relief that he almost felt like crying. Dean. Dean was grumbling and complaining beneath him, urging him to _get off_ him already, and could he _please_ watch where he's going next time?

Seamus climbed to his feet on jelly-legs, offering a hand to Dean to pull him after him. Dean was frowning at him indignantly though without any real heat, and when Seamus bent to gather up his notes and textbooks with slightly trembling hands he helped him.

"What were you in such a hurry for? Don't the prefects always tell people off for running through the porthole?"

Seamus shrugged, accepting the faint scolding that Dean handed to him without complaint. He was struggling to get a hold of his relief, with the profound sense of gratitude that it hadn't been his friend who'd been Petrified. A small part of his mind whispered that if it wasn't Dean than it had to have been someone else in his year's cohort, but he couldn't bring himself to care about that. Not now.

Dean quickly seemed to realise that something was wrong. Urging Seamus further into the common room to make way for the sixth years that were attempting to skirt around them, his frown became more concerned than annoyed. "What's wrong, Seamus? You look upset. What happened?"

Swallowing, Seamus stared fixedly at where he fiddled momentarily with his books before finally lifting his gaze towards Dean. He had to swallow again through the tightness in his throat, the dryness in his mouth, before he managed to speak. "It's… someone else has been Petrified."

Dean's face immediately became a different kind of concerned, bordering on horrified. His voice lowered to a hush when he spoke. "Shit, really? That's… jeez. That's – that sucks." He paused for a moment, clearly at a loss for what to say before continuing. "Do you know who it was?"

Seamus shook his head. His eyes dropped once more to his fiddling hands and he had to fight to thrust aside the unexpected bout of fierce emotion welling within him. "No, I don't, I just… I just…"

"What?"

Seamus could feel Dean staring unblinkingly at him. Dean was like that. When he was worried about something, or thoughtful, or… or a lot of things, really, he wore such an intent stare that he seemed to see straight though Seamus and into his brain. He wondered that Dean couldn't read his mind just by looking at him.

Shaking his head, Seamus shrugged aside his embarrassment and his upset to attempt a casual response. He doubted he managed quite as well as he'd hoped. "I just… I'm glad it wasn't you, like."

Dean was silent for a moment, and Seamus was very aware of that silence, of the muted conversation in the rest of the common room that hadn't grown worried yet. Of the warmth of the fireplace, too, and the comfort of the familiar tower that did wonders for easing his tension.

Finally, Dean placed a gentle, warm hand on his shoulder in a way that didn't seem nearly as awkward or overly intimate as the solemnly mature gesture perhaps should have been. Seamus finally raised his gaze to him and felt his embarrassment rise before the affection in the small smile that Dean gave him. "Thanks," was all he said, squeezing Seamus' shoulder slightly.

Clearing his throat, Seamus nodded. He took a deep breath and strove for casualness once more. "So, you haven't left to go flying yet?"

Dean shook his head. "Not yet. I got a bit distracted reading a letter from my mum."

"Mind if I come down with you?"

Dean smiled once more before it shifted into a concerned frown. "I guess. Except that I'm not sure if we'll be allowed to after another Petrification's happened." He didn't dispute it further, however, and followed Seamus back up to their dormitory to so that he could properly rug himself up.

They didn't end up going down to the quidditch pitch. They didn't even get a chance to leave the common room before McGonagall appeared in a flurry and insisted that, "All students are to remain in the common room until a head count could be conducted". She told them that another Petrification had occurred, that it was Hermione Granger who had fallen prey to it this time, and that a bunch of new rules were being installed once again in response to the calamity.

Seamus was sad that it was Hermione; he wasn't really all overly fond of the girl but she was his housemate all the same. Still, that sadness was overridden by his ensuing relief that _it's not Dean, it wasn't Dean_. He felt a little guilty about that.

Even so, Seamus couldn't find that he really regretted they weren't going out to practice flying all that much.

* * *

Dean gave a jaw-splitting yawn as they made their way down to the carriages, though Seamus considered it to be more of a knock-on effect of the unending expressions of weariness that Ron was moaning and sighing behind them. The end of the school year had wound up with little exceptional circumstances after the Petrifications had been reversed. Something had happened with Harry and Ron again – Seamus knew because they'd ended up in the Hospital Wing _again_ , at almost exactly the same time as they had last year – and Lockhart had disappeared a couple of weeks before the end of term but otherwise… it had been largely uneventful.

It was as though the Petrifications had never happened and, with the return of the headmaster, it seemed that they wouldn't continue, too. All of the professors seemed a lot more comfortable now, as though confident that nothing else could go wrong. Seamus didn't understand the basis for that comfort but he couldn't deny that it rubbed off on him.

Hermione was back to being a chatterbox, as usual, saying something over Seamus' shoulder that had a ring of bossiness to it. He resolutely ignored her; he was glad that she was better, certainly, but _damn_ was she a incessantly bossy. Instead he turned to Dean who walked at his side, rubbing his eyes dopily as though Ron's tiredness was rubbing off on him still. "You'll make sure you'll write to me this summer, yeah? I don't know if I can stand another whole two months just with me cousins for entertainment."

Dean nodded, as he had each time that Seamus had asked as much from him. "Yeah, 'course."

"And I'll come and visit you more times this time, like. I talked to me mam and she said that I might be able to go a couple more times this holidays."

Dean nodded again. "Cool. Yeah, and I'll come and visit you too this time."

Seamus slowed in step until Harry nearly crashed into him from behind, urging him to pick up his feet once more. His blinked at Dean, eyebrows rising in surprise. "What? Since when? I thought your mam said you couldn't come, like?"

Dean shrugged once more. "Since yesterday when she sent me a letter. Mum said that she might make a holiday of it or something. A family thing, and maybe I could come to Ireland for a week or two."

Seamus found his smile spread and grow. "Really? That's great! You could just stay at me house or whatever."

"Do you think your mum would mind?" Dean didn't sound as concerned for the intrusion as his words would suggest he was. Seamus wondered if his mum had told him to say those exact words on more occasions than one.

Waving aside the concern, Seamus shook his head. "Nah, we've got, like, a massive house. You know me uncail's family's the descendant of a Lord or Tiarna or whatever 'cause he's pureblood, like?"

"Yeah, you said that. It still seems weird that you're half pureblood."

"Someone can't be 'half pureblood'," Hermione interrupted from behind them, as though she'd actually been to their conversation rather than that she Harry and Ron's. "That's what a half-blood is."

Seamus and Dean ignored her. Such interruptions were fairly typical of Hermione, and though she might have sounded attentive, Seamus would have laid money on the fact that she'd only heard the one snippet of 'incorrect' words and sought to correct their inaccuracy before falling back to her own discussion. Instead, he nodded at Dean. "Yeah, I know. And Uncail Jack doesn't exactly seem like the kind of pureblood type, you know? He's not lordly at all, and kind of a big-mouth. What I meant was that we usually get the old county manor in the summer break and it's huge. There'd be heaps of space for all of you."

Dean grinned widely. "Great! Then I'll tell my mum and see if we can visit. She'd probably like to call your mum or dad first, though."

"Make sure it's by Floo then, like. Me mam doesn't have one of those phones and dad doesn't tend to use it 'cause they don't work around magic do well."

Dean nodded. "Right. Well, I can't see mum sticking her head into a fireplace or anything so we might have to keep it just to letters."

"Sounds fine to me," Seamus said, beaming at his friend. They pulled up beside the horseless carriages and Seamus jumped into the closest one with sudden enthusiasm than he'd been bereft of that morning at the prospect of not seeing Dean for weeks. The summer holidays weren't looking quite so boring this time around.


	3. Chapter 3 - Third Year

A/N: Just as a WARNING, this chapter contains mentions of off-screen violence. Honestly, compared to further along the line, it's not really anything particularly profound, but just a heads up.

 **Chapter 3: Third Year**

To say the Kavanagh country manor was huge would be an understatement. When he first saw it, Dean was momentarily stunned. He wasn't the only one, either; his mum, stepdad and three younger siblings had been rendered just as speechless.

They'd travelled to Ireland on the first of August, taking the ferry and thence driving south in the direction of Waterford and Cork beyond. His mum had the directions from Mrs Finnigan and had directed Dean's stepdad the whole way. The entire car had grown quieter and increasingly speculative with each passing of the progressively extravagant estates. Dean didn't think his mum had meant him to hear her murmured words, "I didn't realise they were _this_ wealthy", or his stepdad's hushed reply, "It's not going to be awkward, is it?"

Dean didn't really understand what they meant by that. He had enough of an understanding of money to know that encountering others of a significantly different economical standing could be a little uncomfortable, but this was Seamus. Seamus who, when Dean thought about it, looked and acted about as far from some wealthy family's son as could be. He always dressed as though he'd only just rolled out of bed and dragged on whatever rumpled clothes he could scavenge off the floor without bothering to do more than run his hand through his hair. Half of the time he forgot his tie entirely and McGonagall had long since given up attempting to remind him to wear it. He didn't act stuck up either, not exclusive or condescending towards others. Though there were times when he seemed to overlook people or even forget their existence entirely, there was no cruelty or superiority entailed. It was simply that Seamus lived so in the moment that he often seemed to forget that the world outside of what he was doing in that second existed.

Dean was almost flattered at times to consider that even a portion of Seamus' flighty attention span was reserved for him over the summer break. He really was the best sort of best friend in that regard. Seamus always set everything aside for Dean.

But more than that, Dean hadn't had a clue that Seamus was wealthy. Or, more correctly, that his family was wealthy. Though Dean had to ask him specifically in the letters they exchanged over the holidays, he'd mentioned offhandedly that it was more his second cousin's family that held the pureblood name and riches. Dean knew enough about purebloodedness from his time at Hogwarts to understand that such meant Seamus' own parents were upstanding too. Significantly higher than Dean's own middle-class.

Despite of that, however, and despite of the strangeness of the reality it suggested, Dean didn't think it really changed anything. Not with Seamus. Surely not.

The Kavanagh manor was at the end of a long driveway that wove around undulating hillsides. It sat behind a pair of pristine gates that weren't actually attached to a wall at all; they were just there, like an archway in the middle of nowhere. The entire car had fallen utterly silent, even Dean's little sister June who always had something to say. She must have picked up on the atmosphere, or maybe she too was just captivated by the manor as it drew into sight.

It was… _huge_. To Dean's wide-eyes, it looked like one of those farmhouses from the Jane Austen movies his mum was so fond of. At least three stories tall across its length, pale stonewalls rose towards flat roofs and pointed steeples, multiple windows facing the driveway and their arrival. Before the house – before the mansion, really – a large, sprawling garden of perfectly flatness and mown lawns, of flower beds and delicate little shrubs, lined the approaching driveway. A blossoming garden of its own decorated green in the middle of the roundabout end of the driveway with a short, slender little tree at its very centre.

Dean's stepdad slowed to a crawl as they approached the roundabout, leaning forwards in his seat to peer up at the house. Dean wondered if he knew his mouth had fallen open, cheeks visibly paling just slightly. That, and Dean's mum's similar response, only served to make him more discomforted.

At least until he saw the front door slam open and Seamus emerge with a leap that took him bodily down the short steps of the veranda. Then all of his nervousness seemed to fade away.

Dean climbed over out of the car the moment it stopped, which just happened to be a bare second before Seamus reached him. Or more correctly ploughed into him, for that was truly the only way Dean could describe the sort of hugs Seamus enacted when they met after a brief time apart. It was a struggle to maintain his footing as his friend practically dragged him to the ground but somehow he managed.

Seamus was laughing as he drew away. Then he frowned, pouting slightly through the wavering hints of a smile. "How is it you're taller than me, like? Me mam said I had a growth spurt and everything."

Dean grinned. "Me too, apparently." He didn't really have all that much competitiveness when it came to his height, but Seamus seemed to think them in some sort of a race. He was still a good couple of inches shorter than Dean, regardless of his supposed growth spurt.

Seamus shook his head, smile erupting once more. Just like that the subject was dropped. "Bout time you guys showed up. I've been waiting for you all day!"

"Yeah, we got a little lost back at that town about half an hour away," Dean replied, gesturing vaguely over his shoulder. He found himself smiling whether he'd intended to or not. It was impossible not two when faced with Seamus' enthusiasm. He stood barely a foot before Dean, feet planted and head cocked slightly as he beamed at him. He was dressed as a bit of a mess, as was usual for him, but unlike the casual, sloppy wear that he clad himself in on the weekends at school, it actually looked appropriate. Fitting, even, and comfortable. His patched jeans were well-worn and stained with dirt, but the kind of stained that bespoke a day of outdoor leisure or work out in the gardens rather than a disinclination towards washing. He was barefoot, toes just as dirty as his jeans, and even his hands had a sort of darkness to them as though he really had been digging with his fingers rather than a shovel.

Dean could only shake his head. It was the same old Seamus. He looked starkly outstanding when compared to the mansion behind him.

Seamus was speaking before Dean could think to continue. nodding his head knowingly. "Yeah, me mam said that was probably it. It happens a fair bit, like, when we give people directions. You took the third turnoff instead of the second one, right? Silly blighter."

"It was a little discrete, the second one," Dean's mum said, climbing out of the car and rounding it to Dean's side. She smiled warmly at Seamus, and Dean thought she made a pretty good attempt at concealing her awkwardness for her previous awe. It was something that his stepdad, helping his half-siblings from the car, wasn't nearly so good at. "But we got here eventually. I'm sorry for the delay."

In typical Seamus fashion, he immediately discarded his scolding words of moments before with a shrug. "Doesn't matter. You got here eventually. Mam's coming out in a second. She was just talking to me Uncail Jack and me Aintín Mags, 'cause Uncail Jack was saying how he wanted to have bread-and-butter pudding tonight but he's already had that three nights in a row now, like, and she thought you might want something different, and Connor was going down to the lake out back but he had to take Fergus with him and Fergus said that _I_ had to go with him, so me mam was saying…"

Dean stared in growing amusement at his friend as he blabbered, half-turning to help his stepdad as he began to unload the luggage from the car. Seamus was talking at a million miles a minute as he often did when he got excited, and that coupled with his thick accent made half of his words unintelligible. Dean didn't think it was just because of the accent – half of his words hardly seemed relevant to anything at all – but even so, it sounded somehow more pronounced than it usually did. Dean wondered if he simply hadn't ever noticed Seamus' accent getting heavier after the summer break or did he make a concerted effort to dampen it.

"… got to come out and help to feed them all so," Seamus shrugged in conclusion of his story, half of which Dean hadn't caught. Feeding what? "Anyways, I was sort of just in the north parlour up there, like, so I could see you come along the drive and –"

"Seamus Finnigan!" A voice bellowed from the house. "Do _not_ tell me you are still not changed from this morning! I _told_ you to change out of your filthy clothes before Dean and his family got here!"

At the sound of a woman's voice, sharp and even more thickly accented than Dean was familiar with, Seamus rolled his eyes and skirted the car to peer back towards the manor doorway. He leant on the front of Dean's family's car to call back to her. "But mam, dad said he'd come with me to show Dean the púca tonight! I didn't want to change, like, if I was going to –"

"You get back inside and you get properly dressed right now, me boy! I'll not have you looking even more like a scruff than you usually do, no matter what your father says!"

Seamus gave a long-suffering groan before sparing Dean and his family a glance. It was to Dean's mum that he spoke more than Dean when he said, "Sorry, I'll be back in a minute, like." Then he was off again, skirting the last of the car so quickly that he practically leapt over the bonnet and racing back inside. Dean found himself grinning again, catching his mum's eye as she smiled in turn. She looked slightly less uncomfortable now and Dean attributed it to Seamus' inane chatter. He was always good at making people comfortable simply because he didn't give them the chance to be _un_ comfortable.

Dean had just hefted up his bag from the car boot and made to round the car himself when a short, slender woman with light hair and dark eyes appeared at his side. She was wearing robes but only informally over a pair of slacks and a blouse. Dean recognised her as Seamus' mum from the brief glimpses of her he'd caught at Kings Cross Station. Despite her diminutive stature, Dean swore he could feet her strength of character from her very presence. The way she planted her feet even in casualness made her seem as immoveable as a boulder.

Glancing up at Dean's mum, Mrs Finnigan heaved a sigh, shook her head and adopted an apologetic smile. "Sorry about that. Honestly, I don't think me son would have a brain between his ears unless I knocked it into him, like." Her smiled grew fond a moment later nonetheless as she took another step forwards, holding out a hand out to Dean's parents. "It's lovely to finally meet the both of you. I'm Sinéad, Seamus' mam."

Dean's mum clasped her hand to receive a thorough hand pumping. "Julia," she said, before gesturing to Dean's stepdad and his siblings. "And this is Andrew, Millie, Keira and June. And Dean, of course, but –"

"Yes, I've heard a lot about Dean," Mrs Finnigan cut in with as much politeness as such an interruption could manage. She turned her smile onto him that Dean returned it with a touch of embarrassment. "Your practically all Seamus talks about in the holidays, like. Honestly…" She shook her head again but once more it was with definite fondness.

Then, in a sudden motion that caused Dean's stepdad to start slightly, she pulled her wand from her pocket and gestured it towards their luggage. They'd packed as lightly as they could but it was still quite a display to see half a dozen bags drift into the air. Dean's stepdad shifted in step, gaze upraised and wide, while his mum very resolutely didn't make and response. Millie, Keira and June stared in open wonder.

For her part, Mrs Finnigan didn't seem to notice their awe or discomfort. She beamed at them all with Seamus' smile before beckoning to them all. "Now, then, have you had any lunch? Can I get you a spot to eat, like? We'll have the house elves take your luggage indoors and I'll show you your rooms, but no need to rush." She turned and made to lead them inside, glancing over her shoulder to gesture with her wand towards them once more. Dean was unsure if it was actually to them or to their luggage that drifted overhead. "If you have any questions be sure to ask away, like, yeah?"

Dean found himself nodding alongside his parents. Mrs Finnigan acted a lot like her son, jumping right to the heart of the situation before springing out of it again. She left no room for confusion, and Dean found that he quite liked that. It made easing him in an otherwise unfamiliar slightly less so discomforting. He followed Mrs Finnigan without a word of dispute.

It took Dean three full days before he stopped being so overawed by the estate. Not entirely, of course – it was practically a castle, and June seemed to entirely believe it was if her whispered exclamations into Dean's ear the first night of their stay was any indication. But even so, he found himself grow less uncomfortable. He still thought he'd get lost if Seamus wasn't accompanying him most of the time, but thankfully Seamus seemed as inclined to stick to him like a shadow as Dean was to have himself stuck to.

He met the infamous Fergus and discovered the older boy really was a bit of a pompous prat. Dean would never say as much aloud, but Fergus seemed to more correctly embody the persona of a spoilt rich boy. He met Connor too, and Aimee, who barely glanced up from her book at her introduction before bowing her head once more, as well as a whole range of cousins and aunts and uncles who he knew by name but not by face. He finally met Seamus' dad, a tall man who shared very little with Seamus in terms of physicality except for his large blue eyes that seemed to be filled with a unshakeable upwelling of inquisitiveness. That and the fact that Dean finally knew where Seamus got his sloppy dress and disregard for dirtiness from; his dad looked like he'd spent most of the morning rolling in a mud patch. 'Digging a trench' was all he said, which apparently meant something that Dean didn't understand because Seamus just sniggered while his uncle Jack smirked and his mum shook her head in exasperation.

Mr Finnigan did indeed accompany Seamus and Dean down to a glade out the back of the estate the first evening to see a púca. Only after professing long and expansively to Dean's parents that the goat-like fairies, "Weren't dangerous, or at least this herd aren't", however. He then proceeded to describe how he'd known them for years and they truly were practically harmless. They were, in Dean's opinion, some of the most creepily captivating magical creatures he'd ever seen.

They explored the manor together – or more correctly Seamus showed him all of his favourite places – and the estate grounds after that, swimming in the pond with the accompaniment of Seamus' amicable older brother by ten years Eoghan who, according to Seamus, was the best person in the entire world. After spending a whole morning with him, Dean was inclined to agree; Eoghan was friendly, good-natured and easy-going, yet somehow seemed capable of reigning Seamus in when he grew too out of hand. And of providing adequate supervision, at the request of Mrs Finnigan because, "That damned Kelpie's been hanging around again and I don't want you two eaten". It would have concerned Dean more if Seamus hadn't rolled his eyes and muttered beneath his breath that she was _always_ saying that and his uncle Jack said he hadn't actually seen said Kelpie for three years.

They played quidditch together, something made far easier for the fact that Seamus' had a plethora of cousins to bulk out their ranks so they could manage an actual game, as well as introducing Dean's siblings to some of the culture of magic. Dean hadn't realised just how much he'd integrated until he sat back and observed the confusion and wonder reborn time and time again upon his family's faces. Even more so when Dean was able to practice some of his own magic; being at the Kavanagh manor meant that he could do so without the Ministry hounding his heels for underage use. It was liberating to be able to use magic outside of school for once.

Dean's homework finally arose as a topic of necessity to address on that third day when Mrs Finnigan demanded that Seamus spend a little less time playing and a little more committed to his studies. Dean winced slightly in sympathy, and then empathy when his own mum pulled him up for the fact that she hadn't seen him with his nose in a textbook all holidays.

Which was how, on a perfectly sunny day where a swim in the pond would have been much appreciated, Dean found himself reclining in the shade amidst a sea of textbooks, parchment, precariously balanced inkwells and half-eaten plates of snacks provided by the manor chef. Of course they had a chef, Dean had realised after the first day. What sort of a pureblood manor wouldn't?

Dean was struggling through his Defence essay, slogging through over two feet of parchment by the time midday ticked by. He didn't understand why they were given revision essays over the summer, especially for Defence when they didn't even know who their professor would be. It was a poor excuse for an essay, but at least Dean thought he was doing better than Seamus was; his friend appeared to have dozed off at some point about half an hour ago, and the half-roll of parchment Dean had seen him make in his sleep showed the impression of his essay staining the cheek that rested upon it. Dean could only snort and shake his head. He was hardly the most studious of people, but at least he was doing better than Seamus was that day.

His audible amusement must have woken Seamus, for he started slightly and blinked himself into full consciousness. As he sat up, the parchment sticking to his cheek tore loose and revealed half of his History anthology notes scribbled across his cheekbone. He yawned, scrubbing an eye with his fist before settling himself down again with a heavy sigh.

"Nice nap?" Dean teased.

Seamus nodded with utter sincerity. "Yeah. I'm thinking I might just…" His eyes drifted closed once more.

"If you fall asleep again then your mum will just make you spend another day doing homework instead of whatever you'd rather be doing," Dean said.

Seamus sighed again in a heavy exhalation that fluttered his parchment. "True. You'd think it was her grades that would turn up bad if I didn't get it done, like."

"My mum's the same, but I don't think she's as bad as yours."

"No one's as bad as me mam," Seamus grumbled, reaching for his discarded quill and dabbing it with ink. He paused instead of writing, however, glancing towards Dean once more. "How long did you say you were here again for?"

Dean shrugged. "I think Mum was saying 'til the end of the week, but I heard her talking to your mum and say that we might keep on a bit longer."

Seamus raised an eyebrow. "How come? Not that I'm complaining or anything, like – you can stay for as long as you want 's far as I care. The longer the better 'cause then I don't have to be lumped in with Fergus so much." He scrunched his nose emphatically.

Dean grinned. "Cool. Might just at that, then. I think Mum just got a bit of a scare about what happened in London and all that. Even if, you know, it's one escaped criminal and what would the odds be that we'd stumble across him?"

Seamus frowned slightly before his face cleared with understanding. "Oh, you mean Sirius Black, like?"

Dean fought the urge to fidget uneasily. Murderers… the topic had never sat well with him. They probably didn't sit well with most people, but for Dean at least they provoked the arousal of memories he'd long struggled to suppress. "Yeah, that's the one."

"That mass-murdering bloke who escaped from Azkaban?"

Pausing in where he'd made to continue his essay, Dean glanced towards Seamus. "Azkaban? You mean that Wizarding prison?"

Seamus nodded. "Yeah, it was all over the _Prophet_ a couple of days back and even got into the _Sheaves_ that come from up Dublin way –"

"Wait, are you saying that Sirius Black is a _wizard_ criminal?"

Seamus paused, quirking an eyebrow once more. Then understanding visibly dawned. "Oh, yeah. Yeah, he is. Did your papers say he was a Muggle?"

"Well, they couldn't very well say he's a wizard."

"True." Seamus nodded. "Sorry, I don't read Muggle papers. Me dad doesn't bother with them – he's sort of more squib than Muggle these days, like, what with everything considered – and me mam doesn't really touch them either."

Dean shrugged, shifting in an attempt to hide his discomfort. "It doesn't matter. I just didn't know either. That he was a wizard, I mean."

"Yeah, he went insane and killed, like, twelve Muggles or something in the First Wizarding War. He was a Death Eater, you know." Seamus gave a dramatic shudder that was too reflexive to be entirely feigned.

"Death Eaters were You-Know-Who's followers, right?"

"Yeah. Scum used to hunt down Muggles and Muggleborns and all that." Seamus shook his head, lip curling, before he made what appeared to be a concerted effort to shrug off his sombre thoughts. When he glanced towards Dean once more it was with the beginning of a smile. "So yeah, I guess I can see where your mam's coming from, like. And you can stay here just as long as you want."

Dean nodded, dropping his gaze back to his essay with a frown. Sirius Black, the mass-murderer he'd heard about from the telly and read of briefly in the papers, was a wizard. It was more disconcerting than anything, abruptly reminded of how much he still didn't know.

In that regard, it was a good thing that Dean was such good friends with Seamus. He might have his feet planted more in the Wizarding world than the Muggle one, but he certainly made a pretty good attempt at bridging the cap between them.

* * *

Professor Lupin was the best Defence professor they'd had so far. Better than Quirrell and in a different league entirely to Lockhart. He was fun, he was interesting, he was casual and friendly and Dean was entirely willing to learn the just about everything he was prepared to teach. Eager, even.

Still, even with all of that, he had to admit that the lesson with the Boggart was the most stupid idea that he could possibly have come up with.

It was all well and good when it was happening. Facing your greatest fear, turning it into something funny, the class exploding into laughter. All in good-humour and not dangerous at all. For it wasn't, really. They had a professor amongst them who could put a stop to any arising calamities, and it was only a Boggart after all. It couldn't actually hurt anyone. Not in the classroom anyway.

But Dean couldn't sleep that night. Not after what he'd seen and what now hung in the forefront of his mind. From the sound of it he wasn't the only one, too. He heard Ron start in his sleep, whimpering something about spiders, heard Neville muttering to himself from across the room when he actually managed to retire to his bed at all. Dean had overheard him whispering something that sounded guilty, an apology to Snape, to his grandmother, something about the outfit he'd forced Boggart Snape to wear. He'd been flinching and glancing over his shoulder all afternoon. And Seamus…

Dean glanced over at Seamus' bed. The curtains were half-drawn in the careless attempt at privacy that never really worked, but it was silent. Far be it from suggesting that he slept, Dean took it for indication that he too lay awake. Seamus always talked in his sleep; not loudly but audibly enough for Dean to hear since the curtains were never actually closed and the Muffling Charm thus rendered inactive. In some ways, Dean found his friend's often intelligible mumbles comforting. Amusing too, much of the time.

Not tonight, though. That night Seamus wasn't speaking at all.

Harry was the only one of them who didn't appear affected by the class. Immediately afterwards, they'd all been on something of an excited high, but that had rapidly faded in them all. Except for Harry, that was, who hadn't even gotten a chance to face the Boggart. Not that he likely would have been scared at all even if he had been. Harry was simply fearless like that.

For Dean, he was haunted by the image of a severed hand crawling across the floor like a spider. It should have been comical, something out of a macabre childhood cartoon on Muggle television, but it wasn't. Not now. Dean had laughed along with the rest of his class when he'd cast _Riddikulus_ upon it, snapping it in a mousetrap. But in the darkness of the night, lying in bed and contemplating it and considering just _why_ it was his phobia… it didn't seem so funny anymore.

Rolling onto his side, Dean heaved a sigh and resolutely ignored Ron's whimpers from across the room. He did feel like he should do something, try to comfort his friend perhaps, just as his mum had always comforted him in the past when he had nightmares. He really wasn't all that close with Ron, though. Probably the only person he might offer such comfort to in the entire school, the only person he thought that, while it would probably be embarrassing, he would be able to offer some sort of shallow consolation to, was Seamus. And Seamus…

Seamus was strange like that. Most of the time he was bright and bubbly, smiling and laughing and talking non-stop. He was overly tactile, often just leaning upon Dean or bumping his shoulder into his, or slinging an arm around his neck in a manner that was so casual that Dean hardly realised he was doing it until the day he came to the abrupt realisation that he was perfectly fine with Seamus hanging off him. It was Seamus, after all.

And yet even so, at other times Dean was afforded a very distinct sense of distancing. Seamus was still always friendly, bantering, full of laughter and joviality. He still lounged into Dean, taking up more of Dean's seat than his own on the days that they managed to snag a couch in the common room. Yet he would appear thoughtful at times, almost wary, as though attempting to read the atmosphere or withdrawing slightly before he shunted that urge to the side and bodily threw himself into the thick of things. As though he had a natural inclination for hesitancy which, when Dean considered it and everything else he knew of Seamus' personality, seemed entirely ludicrous. Dean didn't really know what could possibly urge him towards tentativeness, but he never asked. Maybe he was just misreading things?

Still, even if he was, Dean wasn't sure that Seamus would appreciate him sticking his head between his curtains and asking if he was alright. Maybe he'd rather just think over the Defence lesson solitarily like the rest of them were? The Banshee that had sprung forth for him had certainly been terrifying.

It was because Dean was turned towards his friend's bed, his own curtains hanging limp and half open – for he didn't know if he was entirely comfortable with the thought of being closeted entirely alone in the dark – that he saw it the instant Seamus' curtains fluttered. They twitched and drew further open, and through the darkness Dean saw Seamus climb from between them with more silence than he'd thought him capable of. Seamus didn't pause when his feet touched the ground before he was slipping across the dormitory and disappearing through the door that led down to the common room. All without a whisper of noise in his wake.

Dean didn't know Seamus could be that quiet. If he hadn't known better, hadn't seen him physically part the curtains, he'd almost have thought he was a ghost. He stared after his friend for a moment, curious, a little worried, because that's what friends did. When their friends acted out of character, it was worrying. Dean understood that. It made things easier to put a defined understanding to the situation.

Dean's mum had always told him to look after his friends but it was more because he was truly worried than for his mum's words that he rose from bed and followed after Seamus. With slow steps, he crept across the room as quietly as he could and slipped through the door.

Seamus was sitting before the fireplace, squished into the couch closest to the flames with his knees tucked to his chest and arms wrapped around his legs. It was strange to see him like that; Seamus always had such a presence, was always in the midst of people and always happy. Now he looked pensive if not exactly sad, almost diminutive and very alone. Dean couldn't have stopped his feet from taking him down the stairs if he'd tried.

It wasn't until he dropped onto the cushion beside him that Seamus seemed to even realise he was there. He started slightly, blinked as though coming out of a trance and glanced towards Dean. Then he blinked again in ensuing confusion. "What are you doing?"

Dean shrugged, folding his own legs beneath him and folded his arms around himself. It was just a little cold, the heat Warming Charms dampened with the lateness of the hour. The fire was making an attempt to dispel the chill that flooded the open, empty room, but it didn't quite manage. "I could ask you the same thing, actually."

"I asked you first, like."

"True. Okay, I saw you get up and I wondered what you were doing."

Seamus stared at Dean for a moment before he dropped his chin, eyes falling to his knees. Then he shrugged a little awkwardly. "Just couldn't sleep."

"You too, huh?"

Seamus glanced at him sidelong. "You too?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah…"

They fell silent. Strangely enough, in the face of Seamus' discomfort and momentary confusion, before his uncharacteristic quietness, Dean felt his own discomfort ease. The cold upwelling of memory-induced fear, of horror and terror, lessened slightly. He'd known that all of his dorm mates with the exception of Harry were just as disconcerted by Lupin's lesson as he'd been but for some reason it was only when he sat next to Seamus that it really sunk it.

It was still scary. It still left him feeling a little sick. But it wasn't quite so bad now. Besides, Seamus was upset, or at least brooding, and though Dean had never really considered himself a mature person, he supposed he could be the adult in the situation. Or, more accurately, simply someone who sought to comfort a friend.

Shifting slightly along the couch, Dean turned his full attention towards him. He'd never been one to offer more than a friendly nudge or a hug to his younger sisters, but it felt strange to have a yawning gap between himself and Seamus. "Did you want to talk about it?"

Seamus stared at his knees silently for a moment, and from that silence Dean knew that there was no need to specify what it was they were both indirectly referring to. Then Seamus' hand rose to scratch at his head and he spared Dean a feeble smile. Dean wondered who he thought he was fooling. "It's kind of embarrassing, like, yeah?"

"Not so embarrassing when both of us are talking about it," Dean said with a shrug.

"You want to talk about it too?"

Dean quirked his lips to the side, considering. He didn't really want to consider past memories and the source of his phobia but maybe it would help to discuss it. "I guess?"

"You don't sound very convincing."

"Then yeah, I do. I want to talk about it."

Seamus eyes him dubiously. "I don't believe you."

"I do."

"No you don't."

"Yeah I do. Want me to start?"

Seamus shook his head slowly, though it was more in incredulity than denial. "Why would you want to talk about the shape your Boggart was? It's embarrassing, like."

Dean nodded, even if he couldn't entirely agree. The more he thought about it the less he believed in the accuracy of such a sentiment. Was it really so embarrassing when everyone was just as scared of their own Boggart and their own fears? Dean supposed that to a lot of people a severed hand would have seemed more gross rather than terrifying, just as he thought that many would see Neville as being a coward or dramatising for his fear to be Snape. Not Dean, though. He knew Neville was entirely sincere in his fear. He really was terrified of Snape.

Dean watched Seamus sidelong as he spoke. "I guess it might help to talk about it, maybe. Get it out of your head."

Seamus eyed him once more. "You sound like an adult when you talk like that."

Dean gave a wry smile. "Yeah, well, maybe that's because I'm just copying what Mum always says." Seamus nodded slightly as though understanding but otherwise didn't reply. Dean shifted slightly in his seat. "So?"

"So what?"

"Do you want me to start?"

Seamus seemed hesitant for a second before he shrugged. He had that wary cast to his expression and he wouldn't meet Dean's eye. "Yeah, sure. Knock yourself out."

Dean nodded. With a deep breath he gathered his thoughts. He'd resolved to speak, to voice his fears and get everything out in the open and he would. Still, the moment he was actually going to speak made it feel kind of… daunting.

Swallowing, he took another breath before saying the first thing that came to his mind. "My dad was actually murdered, did you know?"

Seamus finally snapped his full attention towards him. His eyes were blown so wide that they seemed to take up most of his face. "What?"

 _Maybe I shouldn't have started with that_ , Dean thought guiltily. But he had, and it was already out there, so he'd just have to fly with it, even if it did make him feel slightly sick to consider. He nodded. "Yeah. When I was a kid. I think it was in the time of the First Wizarding War or something? I didn't learn about it 'til I was about seven, though."

Seamus stared at him. His cheeks had rapidly paled and he looked more horrified than Dean felt. In a lot of ways, it was sort of comforting, made it easier for Dean to get a handle on his own queasiness and discomfort. When Seamus spoke it was in a bit of a croak, probably the quietest that he'd ever said anything in his entire life. "I didn't know that. I thought your dad just left your mam."

Shrugging with forced casualness, Dean nodded. "Yeah, that's sort of what Mum lets everyone think. I mean, it's pretty obvious that Andrew isn't my real dad. I mean, he looks nothing like me and he's practically blond to boot. But still… yeah, we never really tell anyone."

Seamus stared at Dean for a long pause. There wasn't any pity on his face, for which Dean was grateful. Not even sympathy, really. He looked simply shell-shocked. "Shit."

"Yeah."

"So, like… how did you find out?"

Dean's mind drew back to the day he'd found out. To the morning he'd made to step into the kitchen and paused just outside as he'd caught the muffled words his mum and stepdad spoke through the closed door. Dean couldn't remember a great deal of his childhood but that overheard conversation he remembered as though it had happened yesterday.

 _"…say they've finally found the body. He was murdered, Andrew. Chopped to pieces, they said, and somehow preserved. How is that even possible that it was kept for so long? He's been missing for years. What kind of a sick, twisted…?"_

 _"I don't know. I don't think it would do either of us any good to know, either."_

 _"I don't know what to do."_

 _"About Dean?"_

 _"About Dean. He was his father, maybe he should…"_

 _"You can't tell him, surely. At least not yet. He's still a kid, Jules. He wouldn't understand and he'd probably be terrified."_

 _"Of course I'm not going to tell him now. I just didn't know if I should tell him at all."_

There had been a moment of silence in which Dean, eyes wide at what he'd heard yet couldn't quite comprehend, had barely breathed. Andrew had been the one to continue with a sigh.

 _"How about we just sit on it. Leave it for a time and then, I don't know, maybe he'll ask? Maybe some day he'll be ready to hear it?"_

Dean's mum had sighed in turn. _"Fucking hell._ "

It was the first time Dean had ever heard his mum speak curse. That as much as anything had impressed upon him the weight of the situation. Dean had fled before he could listen to another word.

"I overheard Mum and Andrew talking about it just after they found out," Dean explained to Seamus, drawing himself back to the common room. Seamus was still staring at him, still wide-eyed. "Apparently he'd been sort of chopped into pieces and preserved. I only started thinking when I realised I was a wizard – and that my real dad might have been a wizard too – that it was probably a Preservation Charm or something that kept him like that."

He fell quiet, memory drawn back once more. To his avoidance of his mum for a few days because he hadn't been able to quite look at her without thinking of her words and the heartfelt curse she'd uttered. He knew that she'd been worried about him and his distancing but he had never told her that he knew, that he'd overheard her words. He wasn't sure if he ever would tell her.

It was a little after that when Dean saw the cartoon. In comical simplicity, the villain was 'chopped to pieces' but somehow, like a chicken with its head axed from its neck yet still able to run around for minutes afterwards, the hand had still been mobile. Dean recalled staring, sickened at the television screen as the heroes danced around the spider-like, severed hand, even going so far as to whack it with a bat to get it to stop moving.

Dean knew exactly where his Boggart had gotten its shape when he'd approached it. Just the thought of dismemberment drew thoughts of his dad to the forefront of his mind, images he'd only gleaned from old pictures and tapes. It horrified him still, even after six years of knowing. He wondered if he'd ever reach a point where it wouldn't.

"So, like… that's why your Boggart was a severed hand? Because your dad was chopped…" Seamus trailed off into a muffled grunt that was more of a squeak. He looked like he was going to throw up. For a second, Dean regretted telling him at all.

At least he did until Seamus slid up the couch a little, unfolding from his curl so that he leaned his shoulder against Dean's in a manner that was reminiscent of his normal. Reminiscent, but not quite the same. "Shit, Dean. I'm really sorry about that, like. I didn't know."

"Of course you didn't. I didn't tell you."

"That's not what I meant."

Dean nodded. He wasn't entirely sure what it was that Seamus had meant but the sentiment was there anyway. Seamus wasn't exactly one to engage in deep and meaningful conversations but the sympathy he struggled to offer was felt nonetheless. "Thanks, Seam."

Another silence ensued to the crackle of the fire. Speechless and contemplative, Dean felt that, for the first time since seeing the Boggart as a severed hand, he felt a little comfortable with the fact. Or at least slightly less horrified. He'd hardly said anything to Seamus, had barely explained or admitted to anything, but it felt better to have voiced it. It made it feel like he wasn't so alone with his fear anymore. Besides, even if it hadn't been that beneficial to him – which Dean thought it sort of was – Seamus seemed to have been crept a little from his pensive shell. Enough that he finally seemed inclined to speak up.

"I've seen a Banshee twice, you know."

Dean glanced towards him, keeping his expression mild. It probably wouldn't be a good idea to express incredulity, even if he would admit that seeing such shock and horror on Seamus' face had been sort of comforting for him. It felt nice to have someone else as heartfelt in his horror as Dean was.

But Seamus was different to Dean in that regard. If Dean freaked out then he likely would too. "A real one?"

Seamus nodded. "Yeah, a real one. Scared the shit out of me, like. Both times."

He was silent for a moment once more and Dean let him sit in it. He'd started, and Dean knew Seamus well enough to know that, even if he was reluctant, when he actually started talking he was never inclined to discontinue. Predictably enough, Seamus proceeded a minute later.

"The first time I was… I think I was five? Yeah, it must have been when I was five. Me cousin, he was real sick when he was a kid, like. One of those poorly kids who's always really white and coughing and looked like he was four years old when he was actually seven 'cause he was so small."

Dean nodded his understanding but he didn't think that Seamus even saw him. He was staring back at his knees again. "You know what Banshee do, right?"

"They cry when someone around them's about to die, don't they?"

Seamus gave a grunt of humourless laughter. "Scream is probably a better word for it. But yeah, pretty much. Only for the big families of Ireland, though, like. The major ones and their descendants and stuff. Me family, we come from the Kavanagh's, direct on me mam and Uncail Jack's side."

"Did he…?" Dean trailed off as Seamus glanced towards him. He looked less horrified, his paleness warming slightly from when he'd heard Dean's explanation, but only to be replaced by a deep sorrow and regret that looked too old for his face. Strange, too. Dean had never seen Seamus look so serious about anything before.

Slowly, he nodded. "Sean was me favourite cousin when I was little. It was stupid, like, but we sort of got close 'cause our names were similar. Anyway, even though he couldn't play outside or anything all that much, he was really cool. Only a year older than me, too, like, and I used to spend a heap of time just hanging out with him inside the manor.

"Except that when I was six he got really sick. Like, _really_ sick." Seamus swallowed thickly, loud enough that Dean heard him. "Me mam and dad and Eoghan, we went to see him. I didn't realise 'til I was older that it was probably to say good-bye to him, like. Anyways, we'd only just gotten there when he started coughing real bad and me mam told Eoghan to take me outside so we didn't have to watch. I didn't see him die or anything."

Seamus trailed off, but Dean didn't need him to continue. He could speculate as to what had happened. That Seamus and his brother had gone outside to escape from their dying cousin and had either stumbled across or been afflicted by the screams of a Banshee. The image of the deathly pale Boggart, long, stringy black hair half covering her face and dragging herself across the room towards Seamus with a mounting wail ensuing from her hanging jaw rose to the forefront of his mind. It had been terrifying to see the shambling creature, and that was without a backstory to explain it.

Seamus clearing his throat drew Dean's attention back towards him. "Anyways, yeah, so that was the first time. The second time we were just leaving me great- grandad when I was about ten I think? I heard the screaming and – you don't forget what a Banshee sounds like when it screams, like. Me and Eoghan, we didn't say anything, but me mam looked like she knew what it was and even though me dad didn't seem to at first I guess Mam told him a little later cause he stopped asking questions after that first day. That was how we knew before me Aintín Mags even sent us a Floo message that great-grandad was… you know…"

Dean shuddered slightly at the thought. He felt the urge to lean into Seamus, to offer just a little support or consolation or… _something_. Not once but twice Seamus had been confronted by a Banshee, and though he hadn't seen the evidence of what the creature's screaming meant, he knew nonetheless. No wonder it was his greatest fear; to Seamus, a Banshee truly did herald death. It had done so already.

Seamus confirmed his suspicions as he continued in his detachedly contemplative tone. "Yeah, so, like, I kind of always just think that if a Banshee was going to crop up it would be one of me family that had died. That scares me a little bit." He looked faintly embarrassed to admit it, raising a hand to scratch awkwardly at the side of his head, but didn't retract his words.

Dean stared at Seamus, struggling to think of what to say. He couldn't think of anything particularly comforting so instead once more said the first thing that came to mind. "Your Boggart was heaps scarier than mine."

It had been the right ice-breaker, apparently, for Seamus glanced towards him, eyebrows raised before snorting in a chuckle. He slumped more heavily into Dean's shoulder and this time it felt it normally did. "You kidding me? You had a bloody severed hand, Dean. That's heaps scary, like."

"Not as scary as a Banshee, though. That thing was terrifying."

"Yeah, but yours you wouldn't even notice it was there."

"Exactly."

"Meaning that it could, like, crawl up into your bed at night and before you even knew it –"

"Stop!" Dean clapped his hands over his ears, cringing even as he found himself grinning. "Don't, or you'll give me nightmares."

Seamus subsided, but he was smiling now. It was his usual smile, if not so all-encompassing of his face, and Dean felt relieved to see it. He was suddenly very glad he'd decided to say something. Their exchange might not have fixed everything – or even anything – but it had aired both of their thoughts and feelings, had provided explanations, and that seemed to somehow make things feel better.

They remained in the common room for a time, resolutely talking about anything but what they'd just discussed before Seamus began to yawn with jaw-cracking wideness. Dean suggested they head off to bed and for once Seamus didn't object that they didn't _have_ to go to bed if they didn't want to. As though they hadn't already held autonomy over their own sleeping schedule for two years.

Dean managed to fall to sleep a little more easily after that. The sound of Seamus' mumbling in his own dreams from the bed alongside him was curiously soothing in its own way.

* * *

"Everyone into their sleeping bags! Come on, now, no more talking. Lights out in ten minutes."

Percy's shout was almost comforting in its familiarity, supportive as Dean struggled to reassert his control over the ominously swelling foreboding in his gut. It hadn't grown all that much since they'd been herded into the Great Hall by the professors and the headmaster, had even died a little in the moments before when Dumbledore had magically locked the doors to the hall. Still, even with that reassurance… _Sirius Black_ had invaded Gryffindor Tower.

Dean was something of a realist about most things, but when it came to murderers he was terrified. It was often a struggle to hide that terror and avoid making an embarrassment of himself.

Turning towards Seamus at his side, who looked torn between his own fear and his excitement for something _new_ and _dangerous_ , he nudged him for attention. Seamus glanced towards him with a raised eyebrow.

"Want to get one of the sleeping bags by the wall before all the good spots get taken?" Dean said.

Seamus nodded immediately, following as Dean turned towards the nearest wall. "How do you think he got in?" He asked, just as he had been asking since they'd left the tower. Just as everyone around them was asking, too.

Dean shrugged, striving for lightness and confidence as he replied. "He could have flown in?" He suggested, and thought it as valid a point as any of the rest of the suggestions – of disguise, of Apparation, of digging an entire tunnel – that arose around him. Seamus hardly seemed to have heard, and was already chattering with his own speculations that grew grander and grander the more he extrapolated. Dean sincerely doubted Black had been able to transfigure himself into a magical creature and have Hagrid cart him onto the grounds himself.

They found a pair of purple sleeping bags in a corner alongside a couple of Hufflepuffs from their year. Dean recognised Hannah Abbott, Wayne Hopkins and Susan Bones a moment before Seamus did, at which point he fell to their sides and immediately began exchanging theories with them. Seamus had sparked up a friendship of sorts with those three Hufflepuffs in particular, Dean had noticed, a combined result of the train trip he'd sat beside Hannah for at the beginning of their second year which had started it all and the subsequent exchanges of Potions lore since. Dean had to admit that he appreciated the help they offered him with his own homework as a by-product of his friendship with Seamus; Potions was surprisingly hard considering that, at its fundamental level, the practical application was simply following a recipe. Dean found that he even quite liked the Hufflepuff's company.

He nodded to Wayne as he slipped into the sleeping bag at his side. Wayne and he seemed to have been weirdly thrown together multiple over the past few years merely by happenstance. They'd even been paired together for duelling the year before. Wayne was a nice enough boy, relatively quiet and usually half-hidden behind his fringe of dark curly hair, but even so Dean knew little enough about him. They barely exchanged a few words before Dean was reclining back in his sleeping bag, appreciating the magicked softness beneath him that made the unyielding floor of the Great Hall comfortable enough to sleep on.

Seamus slithered into the sleeping bag at his side barely seconds before Percy's voice could be heard ringing out across the Great Hall alongside those of he other prefects once more. "Lights are going out now! Everyone in their sleeping bags and no more talking!"

Just like that, the candles abruptly hissed into evaporation and plunged the room into relative darkness. Dean was left to stare up at the night-sky ceiling overhead, at the swirling clouds and the glimpse of stars beyond.

Sirius Black. The mass-murderer Sirius Black. Even though he knew it was in no way related, Dean couldn't help but think of his dad whenever he heard a whisper of a murderer. His real dad, not Andrew. Sirius Black hadn't killed him – Dean knew he hadn't, for it had been a dozen Muggles that the crazy man had destroyed – but even so, he couldn't help but think…

Of severed hands.

Of body pieces lumped together after being ripped apart and chopped to pieces.

Of some poor policeman finding a bag or something in the middle of nowhere, opening it curiously and finding the torn and dismembered pieces of his dad. The thought added a whole new kind of weight to that which already curled in Dean's belly.

The hall wasn't silent. Dean doubted that any of his fellow students would manage even a wink of sleep that night. Not only was there the excitement – and terror – of having a murderer potentially roaming the halls of the school, but the novelty of sharing sleeping quarters with the rest of the school made it far too exciting to actually attempt to sleep. Dean could hear the whispered and muffled giggles that were hushed by some indignant prefect with an overly loud "Shh!" Dean wondered if it was Percy doing the shushing again; he was a bit of a busy-body and was always inclined to boss others into line.

Dean had been staring silently up at the ceiling and the charmed sky for what felt like an age when Seamus shuffled closer to his side so that their sleeping bags brushed together with a grazing scuffle. Dean glanced in his direction but couldn't see more than the pale oval of his face. "Hey Dean?"

His words were a whisper but to his other side Dean still heard Wayne shift slightly as though he'd overheard him. He leant closer towards Seamus, rolling onto his side to close the distance slightly, and spoke in barely more than a breath. "Yeah?"

Seamus was silent for a moment before continuing. "I'm kind of… I mean, it's sort of…"

"Yeah?"

Seamus shuffled a little closer to him, as though making to relay a secret. "This whole this with Black and all. It's kind of scary, like."

His words was so quiet that Dean almost couldn't make them out. More than that, it was so unexpected that Seamus would admit to his fear that Dean thought for a moment that he might have misheard him. After a pause of waiting to see if Seamus would retract his words, Dean found himself nodding. If Seamus could admit something like that then the least Dean could do was to admit similarly. "Yeah, it kind of is."

"Just feels a little soon, like."

"Soon?"

Seamus shifted slightly so their sleeping bags grazed one another once more. "I mean, like, after the Boggart and all, it just seems kind of like…"

Oh. That's what Seamus was talking about. Dean found himself nodding in understanding once more. Truly, he could see where his friend was coming from; they'd been rocked on their foundations such a short time ago with the whole 'facing their fears' thing. And besides, if Dean had unwanted memories triggered by the thought of a mass-murdering maniac, why shouldn't Seamus too? Dean wouldn't think him a coward in the slightest for being reminded of the Banshee every time word of death or killings arose. That was what Banshees cried for, after all.

"You okay?"

At Seamus' question, Dean found himself frowning. "What?"

"Are you okay?" Seamus repeated in his whispering voice. "I just thought that maybe, like, with Black cropping up and all that, maybe if you'd been, I don't know, reminded of your dad or… or something?"

Dean stared through the darkness in surprise. Seamus' words hung awkwardly in the air, but more awkward because of Seamus' evident discomfort and hesitancy, his awkward shifting as though he couldn't quite get comfortable. It sounded as though he wasn't quite sure how to broach the subject, or how to offer support should it be needed, but Dean was startled to realise the evident insight that he showed nonetheless. Seamus had guessed that Dean might have been reminded of his dad just from the sighting of Sirius Black in the school? Scared perhaps, for Dean didn't think Seamus so dim that he wouldn't be able to read as much from another person, but…

Seamus had never appeared particularly insightful. He wasn't stupid by any stretch, and was even quite good at spell-casting, so long as he managed to avoid the explosions and fireworks that still seemed want to arise more often than any other spell. But he tended to blurt out the first thing that rose to his mind, was often blunt and sometimes a little tactless, and Dean hadn't expected him to be perceptive at all on the subject that was currently occupying his thoughts. Just as much as that, Dean hadn't expected Seamus to admit he was scared either.

Maybe their talk from a couple of weeks ago about the Boggarts and what had driven their shape-shifting had opened him up a little. Dean certainly felt somehow more comfortable knowing that there was someone else in the world who knew about his dad. Someone who knew that Dean knew, too. He hadn't known he'd needed it until he had it.

That Seamus had noticed Dean's thoughtfulness, or had at least suspected it, went a long way in making him feel decidedly less shit about the situation. He found himself smiling, even though he knew Seamus wouldn't be able to see it. "Thanks, Seam," was all he said, and Dean swore he could feel Seamus' returning smile.

"No problem," Seamus replied, his tone abruptly lightened once more. Then he was shuffling just a little closer to Dean until he was practically lying on top of his arm in typical Seamus fashion. Dean found he didn't really mind it all so much, though. The comforting presence of a supportive friend went a long way.

* * *

Scratching away in his sketchbook, Dean lay on his stomach in the sun, awaiting the completion of the Defence Against the Dark Arts end of year exam by the rest of his classmates. Ron and Harry sat a little to his side, chatting together with Neville as they waited for Hermione to finish, while most of the Slytherins looked to be grumbling about something or other a distinct distance away. Dean ignored them to focus on his drawings; Slytherins were always grumbling about something.

He thought he'd passed well enough through Lupin's obstacle course challenge, with only a slight hiccup in the pool of Grindylows when one of the little creatures had managed to grab hold of his ankle and trip him up. There had been the Boggart in the trunk, too, which had taken Dean a significant length of time to overcome. The severed hand had morphed horribly into a foot, then a collection of toes and fingers before he'd succeeded. He had managed, however, and Dean felt better for it.

He glanced up as he caught a glimpse from Seamus jogging towards him from his periphery. Seamus was grinning widely, but more noticeably than that he was dripping wet and squelching with every step.

Dean found himself grinning widely in instinctive response. "Did you get dragged underwater by the Grindylow too?"

Seamus laughed out loud, falling to the ground beside Dean with a nod. "Straight under the water, like! Me feet went straight out from under me!"

"Me too," Dean laughed. "Why do you think we both suck with Grindylows?"

Seamus shrugged, flipping his wand in his hand to point at himself and casting a Drying Charm that sent his hair skewing even more crazily than usual. "Beats me. But at least we're not the only ones, yeah?"

Dean could only nod his agreement with the sentiment. He flipped his sketchbook closed and made to sit up, only for Seamus to lean forwards and alleviate it from his hold. "Were you drawing just now?"

"Just doodling. Killing time."

"What, you didn't want to spend your free-time studying for Divination, like?"

"Studying? For Divination?" Dean snorted as Seamus' grin widened teasingly once more. "How do you even study for Divination? I don't think I'd take it at all if it wasn't just an easy grade. I don't think – hey, do you mind?"

Seamus had opened his sketchbook and started flicking through the pages. He'd done it before so it didn't really faze Dean anymore – Seamus was simply presumptuous like that and he was so open and guileless in his curiosity that Dean hardly felt embarrassed. He didn't like people looking through his sketchbook all that much simply because it felt kind of personal, but Seamus had somehow always been the exception to that rule.

Shrugging, Seamus tilted his head to better look at the picture of the quidditch pitch Dean had hashed out earlier that year. "Not really. 'Sides, I like looking at your pictures. You're really good, like."

"I'm not, actually," Dean said, shrugging off the compliment. The compliment itself didn't embarrass him all that much; it was more that Dean knew that, compared to what his younger sister Millie could do, he wasn't truly exceptional. Good maybe, but not a genius like Millie was. His mum had often pondered at where they'd both gotten their varying degrees of artistic talent from considering she professed to having none at all. "I just like drawing."

Seamus shook his head distractedly. "No, you are good. Everyone thinks you are too – remember that banner for Harry you made in first year for his first quidditch match?" He tilted his head back the other way to squint at the image on the page he'd turned to. He sounded like he was only half attending his own words. A moment later and he grinned widely, glancing up at Dean with eyes sparkling. "Is that Trelawney when she wore that stupid Valentine's Day hat?"

Dean couldn't help but smile in return, nodding. Seamus' smiles were always infectious. "Don't show her that or she'll deduct marks from my final grade."

"Oh yeah, sure, Dean, like I was really going to show her," Seamus replied, turning back to flicking through the book. He paused when he got to the page that Dean had just been sketching upon. Dean saw his eyebrows rise, saw him blink in surprise and slowly pick up the sketchbook to turn towards Dean, as if Dean didn't know exactly what it was that he'd been drawing.

"Really, Dean? Really?"

Dean couldn't help but smirk, struggling to contain his laughter. The idea might have been a little sick. It might have been a little bit twisted of him to draw a severed hand that even he could admit was a pretty good likeness to his Boggart, but he hardly cared. He couldn't seem to shake the urge to draw it when it had taken hold of him, and somehow it felt good to have it depicted in drawing. It made it less scary.

"What? I think that's probably my best one," Dean said, shrugging.

Seamus shook his head, but when he appeared to realise that Dean didn't have any particular problem with what he'd drawn he seemed to relax, his smile returning redoubled. He glanced down at the picture for a moment before holding out his hand towards Dean, flicking his fingers at him. "Here. Gimme."

"What?"

Instead of replying, Seamus plucked the pencil from between Dean's fingers, flipped the sketchbook down onto his lap and set to drawing alongside Dean's picture. Dean might have been annoyed if anyone else had done it, but because it was Seamus he was more curious than anything. He slid closer to his side, peering down at the image that his friend drew.

He couldn't help but grin even wider for what he saw.

The stick figure of the Banshee was only just recognisable as what it was for the long scribble of hair and the jagged musical notes that hung around its head. Beneath it, Seamus had written the words "Aaaargh! Fear me!" in block letters, underlined thickly. He leant back slightly and cocked his head to look down at his work with a satisfied smile.

"There. I think _that's_ art," he said with a short nod of his head.

Dean laughed. No one, likely not even Seamus, would think he possessed any artistic flair. But even so, Dean thought the pair of pictures was a masterpiece. They certainly didn't look scary in the slightest, not in the light of day, not in two-dimensions. They really were just an idea, a thought, a fear.

Dean had to wonder at that. As he did, he resolved to pin the page up on his wall as soon as he got back to the dormitory.


	4. Chapter 4 - Fourth Year - Part I

WARNING: This is where the homophobia begins, guys. Nothing pronounced at first, but I'd like to just let you know.

Also, just a heads up for anyone who was particularly interested - fourth year is Seamus'. The whole thing. And that covers a couple of chapters too. I don't know if that'll annoy anyone, but I just figured I'd let you know that, too. Fifth year is Dean's (also a few chapters) and so on and so forth.

Anyway, onward!

* * *

 **Chapter 4: Fourth Year - Part I**

 _"…As he raise 'is flask an' drink away,_

 _'Til mornin' light an' break o' day,_

 _He'll sing it loud, stand tall and say:_

 _'This ere's my bestest potions brew!'"_

The chorus of laughter that followed in the wake of the cries was overloud and more than a little slurring from the drink that was already sloshing through the veins of almost every adult in the Kavanagh, Finnigan and Gallagher families. The bawdy songs had long since deteriorated from odes to victory and ballads of triumph and for the fallen back into the favourites and the classics. That was the fifth time they'd gone for a round of the "Best of Potions". Seamus had been counting.

Most of the other kids had gone to bed, leaving Seamus as the youngest still awake. He didn't think he could sleep, not that night. The Irish had won. They'd won! Sure, Krum had caught the snitch – miraculously, fantastically and awe-inspiringly – but the Irish had still won. That proved it in Seamus' opinion; Krum might be the most exceptional Seeker in the world, but the Irish were the better team. He felt a little guilty to be undermining Aidan Lynch's Seeking skills but it was the truth. Krum was incredible.

Seamus was still buzzing on a high hours after the end of the match. He loved watching quidditch and would have been perfectly satisfied had the match extended for days on end. It was almost unfortunate that it had finished so promptly, even if it was in Ireland's favour.

The Quidditch World Cup that year had been as raucous as ever. Seamus had never attended one before and he could hardly think of it being any better. The only thing missing was Dean's company, but he'd been on a holiday in Berlin with his family. Seamus thought that he personally would have foregone just about any holiday in favour of watching the World Cup – and the Irish, at that – but though Dean did love quidditch he said he'd feel guilty not going. That it was the last family holiday they'd probably have for a while because his younger sister Millie was going to boarding school down south.

Seamus' disappointment hadn't lasted long, however. Eoghan came to the game, and Seamus had hardly seen his brother in months before that. He had Connor with him, and Fergus, even if Fergus was a pompous prat most of the time. Fergus' older brother Dillon – almost as bad as Fergus – was with them two, and the five of them made something of a team with the slightly condescending accompaniment of the near-silent and book-bound Aimee. Almost every other 'child' in their family was either older than Eoghan or younger than Seamus, and had hence been sent to bed.

Eoghan and Dillon, and even Fergus when he'd managed to get his hands on it, had partaken of a splash of the sharp whiskey that Dillon had filched from his dad's cellars. Apparently he'd left home prepared to celebrate the definite victory of the Irish team because 'of course they would win, they're the better team!' Seamus had to agree with him on that at least.

Dillon was deep in his drinks, almost as sloshed as their parents in the adjoining room of their extensive tent. It was one of Seamus' favourite tents – practically a small house, it even boasted a second floor that Seamus' mam had called the 'kids' area'. Those younger kids had been shunted upstairs when the sun went down, a Muffling Charm placed across the ladder to the higher floor, and then celebration had exploded. It was Eoghan's who had urged them to withdraw from the almost manic excitement of the adults into an adjoining room. Though not quite as explosive as their parents', excitement and triumph still coursed through Seamus', Eoghan's and their cousins' veins. So Dillon had cracked open the bottle of his dad's whiskey.

The room they clustered in was relatively small and largely bare but for a ring of couches. It was remarkably soundproof for a tent considering that to Seamus' knowledge no one had cast a Muffling Charm on the walls, which was probably also a good thing from their end because Dillon had long since descended into drunkenness. Seamus could hardly understand half of his words anymore.

"Jus' think that, if Quigley was – wasn't so careful with 'is bat, we'd 'ave knocked that Krum off 'is broom ten minutes into the match!"

"You insulting Quigley, Dil?" Eoghan asked, slouching upon the couch on Seamus' right. Connor was on his left, eyes drifting between his two cousins and smirking slightly. Seamus suspected he knew why; Connor attended Durmstrang because his dad's family had as much of a tradition of going there as the Kavanagh's did to home schooling and even if Connor himself wasn't quite as in keeping with those 'ways' he did have a certain fondness for his school. Seamus had heard from his cousin that Krum – the actual Seeker Viktor Krum – attended the school and he'd been more than a little smug for the fact that he knew the person who was allegedly the most talented Seeker in the world.

"'M not insultin' 'im, 'm just – course not. Quigley's awesome, like, 'e's one of the best." Dillon's brow furrowed deeply. He shook his head before pausing a moment as if stupefied then shaking it again more decisively. Eoghan exchanged a quick grin with Seamus, winking in a way that told Seamus he was deliberately teasing their cousin.

"Him and Connelly, they've been teammates for years, like," Fergus said, sniffing pompously and fidgeting so he was sat up straighter in his seat. "Of course they'd be the best."

"I'm sure there's other teams that have been playing together for longer," Aimee muttered, barely audible from behind her book.

"Oi, what you saying?" Fergus asked, turning towards her indignantly.

Aimee didn't glance his way, only shifting slightly in her armchair to more tightly tuck her legs beneath her. She shrugged. "Just pointing out the obvious, like."

"Where's your pride, Aimee?" Connor asked easily, voice devoid of the heat that both Fergus and Dillon were directing towards her with their glares. Both were often flared with indignation at the drop of a hat. "Anyone would think you almost didn't support your own team, like."

"Really? That's the conclusion anyone would reach just from my comment?" Aimee quirked an eyebrow, eyes flickering briefly from the page of her book towards Connor. Connor's smirk was apparently indicative of his teasing enough to be recognisable for she rolled her eyes, shook her head and turned her attention back to her book. "Whatever."

"Reckon Lynch coulda, like - coulda caught the snitch," Dillon abruptly said, not for the first nor even the tenth time that night. He had evidently disregarded Aimee's words even if Fergus appeared to still be struggling. "Couple more hours we woulda come back."

Eoghan snorted, just as he had each and every time that Dillon had said just that every other time. "No, Dil, we wouldn't have. We'd still've beaten them, like, but Krum would've caught the snitch."

"Nah, he wouldn', Lynch is –"

"He wouldn't've."

"Nah, he would –"

"He woudn't've."

Seamus smothered his grin at Eoghan's words, so practical and non-confrontational that even in his drunken state it didn't raise Dillon's hackles. Fergus' appeared to – again – but then Fergus had always been a bit full of hot air. Seamus found he enjoying watching someone else rile him up.

Eoghan was as much of a supporter of the Irish team as the rest of them, even if he wasn't so vocal about it. That was just how Eoghan was, a characteristic that Seamus' mam had always marvelled at given that she liked to remind Seamus how he could 'talk a rock into fleeing from his verbal assault'. He was as excited and triumphant as everyone else in their family was that they'd won – he just didn't profess it quite as loudly, nor was he as irrational in his support of his team as someone like Dillon.

Still, he'd let Seamus paint an admittedly wonky shamrock on his cheek and swore that he wouldn't take it off until it faded itself. Seamus had grinned at that – his brother really was pretty awesome – even if he despaired over his artistic ability just a little bit. He'd have to ask Dean to help him out a little, as he'd made his own resolution to maintain his steadfast support and proclamations of victory until the new quidditch season started. He would rub it in Ron's face when they got back to school, by Merlin he would.

"…only complaint's that there's so many blokes on our team," Dillon was saying, taking a swig of the dregs of whiskey right from the bottle. "'Sides, Moran's fit but she's not exactly the supermodel type."

"Why would you want her to be a supermodel type?" Seamus asked. "They probably wouldn't be able to sit on a broom, like, or catch a quaffle half as well as someone with a bit more muscle on 'em. Moran's the best."

Dillon rolled his eyes even as Seamus caught a smirking grin from Eoghan a moment before his brother he tucked his chin to hide it. "Seamus, you don' understand, like. When I'm watchin' a game I – I like to _watch_ , you know?"

"Not really," Seamus admitted. Honestly, even if there were 'supermodels' on the quidditch pitch, he thought he'd still be more interested in the game. Unlike most of his cousins, even Eoghan, his excitement for the game had pretty much overwhelmed even the allure of the Bulgarian veelas. It had actually been quite funny to watch most of the men around him practically drooling as they attempted to clamber towards the posing creatures. Connor had nearly face-planted in a fall down the grandstands.

Dillon frowned. He looked as though he was about to object further, but then Eoghan let out a bark of affectionate laughter and wrapped an arm around Seamus' shoulders. "That's our Seamus, sees the quaffle and little else."

"What d'you mean?" Seamus asked, raising an eyebrow at his brother.

"He mean's you've got a one-track mind," Fergus explained with a smirk. Seamus scowled.

Eoghan only laughed again, squeezing his shoulders once more. The brightness and fondness in his eye as he turned his gazed upon him lessened Seamus' disgruntlement somewhat. "That's not necessarily a bad thing, like."

Seamus smiled at his brother gratefully.

"Who'd be the best of 'em, then," Dillon pondered aloud. He was slumped back in his seat, gazing up at the ceiling and only startled slightly to glance in the direction of the greater region of the tent as a shout of laughter speared through the doorway. He settled himself back again a moment later with a frown. "Hughes on the Welsh team's pretty good."

"Keeper, isn't she?" Eoghan grinned at Dillon suggestively.

Dillon snorted. "What about you, then? Who'd you think 's the best player, like?"

"Best player my arse," Aimee muttered to herself, still buried in her book. Seamus saw her roll her eyes as she shook her head couldn't help but wonder why.

Eoghan was speaking, however, and Seamus drew his attention back towards him. "I'd say… probably that Spanish Beater. The one with the curly hair?"

"Ah, Rodríguez, yeah? Little on the heavy side for me," Dillon said with a hum.

"Beaters are supposed to be heavy, like," Connor pointed out.

"Not what I'm referring to, Connor."

"No, but seriously, I think Petterson, that Swedish Beater, she's real decent, like, and she's probably one of the tallest people I've ever seen."

"Oh, and you've seen her in person?" Seamus asked. Connor elbowed him good-naturedly.

"I reckon Jones is pretty decent, meself," Fergus chimed in. Seamus snorted at the thoughtful expression on his face. He was so obviously attempting to emulate his brother's ponderous consideration and just as obviously failing.

"Really? A Welsh player too, like?" Seamus said. "Good to see you're thinking for yourself, Fergus."

Fergus scowled, his frown deepening further when even Dillon chuckled at Seamus' teasing. "Well? What about you then, Seamus? Who'd you pick?"

All eyes turned towards Seamus. He shrugged. "What, the best player?"

"Yeah. Who'd you pick?"

Seamus pondered. He thought all of the Irish players were fantastic – they really were the best team, and more because they worked so cohesively than anything. But for a single player being the best? When Seamus really thought about it, after the match he'd just seen one name rose to the surface more prominently than the rest.

"Well, I guess it's a shit that he caught the snitch and everything, like, but probably Krum?"

Silence filled the room. Seamus saw Fergus' blink then frown further, felt Connor shift at his side and Dillon actually lift his head up from the back of the couch to stare at him. Even Aimee drew her attention momentarily from her book. Seamus blinked, confused. It was almost like… like he'd said something wrong.

Maybe it was a bad thing to support the Bulgarian Seeker so soon after they'd just technically trumped the Irish team? Even Seamus felt a little guilty about that.

"What, so you…?" Fergus' frown was so low that his thick eyebrows seemed to be nearly blinding him. "You think that Krum…?"

Dillon raised a hand as if to halt the conversation. "Wait, Seamus, are you sayin' that, like… like, your saying that –"

"Yeah, I could second that," Aimee abruptly interrupted. She even lowered her book slightly, her voice raising just a little. Immediately, all attention swung towards her. "Although, I'd choose Dimitrov over Krum. He's less of a bear, like."

Another moment of hesitant silence ensued in which Seamus for some reason felt as though, even if all eyes were turned towards Aimee, the attention was still upon him. He felt himself grow guiltier and guiltier by the second.

But then Eoghan's arm, slung around Seamus' shoulders, squeezed slightly and he gave a chuckle that sounded only a little forced. "Yeah, well, you've always had a thing for blonds, haven't you, Aimee?"

The conversation slowly picked back up again after that, though Seamus couldn't help but feel that it was a little sour. He really shouldn't have suggested he supported Bulgaria in any way, even if the Irish had beaten them. He wished he could retract his words.

Gradually his cousins began to drop off to sleep, however. Dillon's spontaneous bursts of laughter, echoing those in the next room, were exchanged for snores. Fergus, as though he felt obliged to, followed his brother into sleep shortly after, still sprawled on the couch. Aimee rose to her feet with a disdainful glance at the two brothers before starting from the room, only pausing to exchange a strange, unreadable glance with Eoghan. She urged Connor to his feet as she did so.

"Get a move on," she said, kicking him into action with a nudge of her foot. Connor grumbled, but he looked almost happy for the Eoghan awake.

Seamus stared for a moment at his cousins. Fergus was drooling and looked like an idiot, while Dillon's snores were beginning to grow in intensity until they seemed to vibrate in a rumble through the air. Seamus had never been particularly fond of the other two boys – Fergus was a right twat and Dillon seemed to be off his face half of the time – but he could appreciate their amusement value in silence and sleep. That and their mutual appreciation for quidditch and the Irish team. Seamus wondered if they'd be angry or appreciative if he drew green shamrocks on their faces with permanent marker.

At his side, Eoghan shifted with a sigh. Seamus glanced towards him to find his brother glancing at him sidelong. He yawned the instant that Seamus met his eyes as though he'd been waiting for it and gave a small smile. "Guess we should probably head up to bed too, like. Follow Aimee's lead."

"We don't _have_ to," Seamus said. Sure, Fergus had fallen to sleep, Dillon had likely passed out and Aimee, the ever mature Aimee, had dragged Connor off to bed to retire like the sensible fifteen year old she was. But Seamus and Eoghan didn't have to. It was supposed to be a night of celebration, even if their own had been somewhat cut short when their parents had chivvied out of their merry-making. "We could just stay up a bit longer."

Eoghan's smile widened as he shook his head. Dropping his arm from Seamus' shoulders, he nudged him into standing. Seamus rose begrudgingly. "No way. You've got to help me to pick up all the adults tomorrow morning."

"You're an adult too, like," Seamus pointed out.

Eoghan shrugged. "Different kind of adult," he said, and Seamus had to agree. Eoghan always felt closer to Seamus than he did to their parents. More like him. He was mature, yes, and often felt like a big, protective blanket to Seamus, but even at nearly twenty-four he didn't quite seem like a grown-up sometimes. He always chose to spend time with Seamus over those more his age at family gatherings too.

Nodding his head and obliging – because Seamus would kick up a fuss if his mam or dad told him to do something but never if Eoghan did – he skirted the couch and made to leave the room. Only to pause in step, hand on the door flap as a frown and a thought fell upon him. He couldn't quite shake it, didn't think he'd be able to if he did go to bed, so turned to glance over his shoulder towards his brother. "Hey, Eoghan?"

Eoghan had been watching him leave with a thoughtful expression on his face that immediately cleared into his usual smile. "Hm?"

Seamus shifted awkwardly for a moment, hand rising from the flap to scratch at his head. "So, erm… about what I said before. Um…" Eoghan didn't say a word but Seamus could tell from the slight blanking of his expression that he knew what he referred to. Swallowing, he continued. "Do you really think it's that bad that I think Krum's a good player, like?"

Eoghan stared at him for a moment before he slowly shook his head. It wasn't immediate denial, not offhanded as though he hadn't really consider his reply. That was what was so good about Eoghan, why Seamus found he could talk to his brother even more easily than he could his mam or dad. Probably the only other person who stood on an equal plain in terms of ease was Dean. "Do you think so?"

Seamus frowned down at his feet. "Well, I mean, sure, it might be in poor taste, like, seeing as our team just played them, but I don't think…" He trailed off, feeling his frown settle more deeply. Was it really such a bad thing? Krum was an incredible player. He flew on a broom as though he was born for it and the ease and grace of his movements was captivating to watch. Dillon might go on some long-winded spiel about how Nikola Vassileva was by far the best player on the Bulgarian team, and Aimee might persist that Vasily Dimitrov trounced them both, but really, Krum was the best. And besides, though Dimitrov might be a close second, Vassileva was way below Krum's league. _Way_ below.

"You can like whichever player you want, Seam," Eoghan said, his voice low, calming and reassuring. That, along with his use of the nickname that Dean too had adopted without comment in their first year reminded him even more of his best friend. The thought was oddly comforting in a situation that was bafflingly upsetting. "It doesn't matter who you like; it could be a Bulgarian, a Welshman like Fergus and Dillon fancy, of a Swedish Beater like Connor."

"But isn't it sort of, I dunno, wrong to like another team's players?" Seamus asked, glancing once more up at his brother. At the slight frown that touched Eoghan's features, he hastened to continue. "I mean, like, I still think the Irish are the best and all, but you have to admit that if you're really thinking about it –"

"It doesn't matter, Seam," Eoghan interrupted him. Even spoken quietly, Seamus was silenced immediately at his words. "Really, it doesn't matter either way. Even if some people do have a problem with it, why's it any of their business?"

Seamus stared at his brother, rendered momentarily mute. He didn't know why, but for some reason he got the sense that Eoghan wasn't only talking about quidditch players anymore. That there was something else beneath his words. He couldn't quite put a finger on what it was, but… "Right."

Eoghan gave him another smile, and though it was small it was genuine. He rose to standing, gesturing for Seamus to continue from the room as he rounded the couch after him. "Come on, then. Off to bed."

The noise of the adults had abated some, with the open laughter and cackles of mirth fading to chuckles and murmurs of tamed amusement. Or at least it was until, halfway through the adjacent living area leading to the room that Seamus and Eoghan shared, a screech that could have been fear as easily as it could have been further enthusiasm once more sounded from a little ways outside the tent.

Seamus paused in step and glanced towards Eoghan with a small smile. Eoghan sighed a little long-sufferingly before shooing Seamus towards the bedroom once more. "You go on, like. I'll go and check to see what's got everyone in a fluff. Probably just Uncail Ronan getting himself in a tither again."

Seamus' smile widened into a grin and he nodded. Continuing into the bedroom, he skirted around a pile of semi-animated dolls that he recognised as being his little cousin Liv's discarded from play before bed. He was stopped once more as he reached the door, however, by Eoghan's gentle call. "Hey, Seam?"

"Yeah?" Seamus glanced over his shoulder once more. Eoghan was wearing that thoughtful expression again, had paused in step on his way towards the room that held the rest of the adults.

Eoghan seemed to chew on his words for a second before continuing. "Just don't think about what Dillon was saying before, like, yeah? Or about any of that 'favourite teams' bullshit."

Seamus raised an eyebrow. What Dillon had said? Did he mean…? "What part of what Dillon said? I couldn't make out most of it – he seemed pretty drunk, like."

Eoghan gave a slightly rueful huff of laughter, closing his eyes briefly and shaking his head. "Probably a good thing," he muttered, and Seamus thought the words were mostly for Eoghan himself. He raised his voice a little a moment later. "I just meant about the Veela and all that. He's being a right tosser so, like, just ignore him, yeah?"

Seamus nodded slowly. About the Veela? As he recalled, Dillon had gone off on a tangent about them briefly, but Seamus hadn't been able to make out most of that either. Dillon had unearthed another half-empty bottle of whiskey by that point, and despite Eoghan's precautions he'd proceeded to down most of it himself. It really was no wonder he'd passed out on the couch. Turning once more with only a final confused if grateful smile for Eoghan, a word of "Night", Seamus left his brother to his self-imposed responsibilities.

It wouldn't be until later that he really considered the true meaning behind Eoghan's words, of their exchange pertaining to quidditch players. It wouldn't be until later that the full reality of his lack of interest in the Veela was realised. When it did, it brought an upwelling of horror along with it.

But there were the Death Eaters. There was the Dark Mark, and everyone's frantic flight from the camping grounds. There was the aftermath of it all, spread across the papers in bold letters and black-and-white pictures of disconcerting vividness that gave Seamus nightmares of the stories from his childhood for days afterwards. He didn't get much of a chance to think about it, and when he did, Seamus was sorely glad that everyone else was so focused and equally horrified by the events at the World Cup.

In many ways, it was very much a good thing that Seamus had a distraction.

* * *

Seamus' fourth year was going pretty appallingly so far. At least, it was after the World Cup. The Irish had won, the thought of which still left him with a fuzz of joy and pushed him to making good his request to Dean to sketch him an botanically correct shamrock. Dean's artwork was incredibly detailed and Seamus hadn't known shamrocks had so much to the. But other than that…

Appalling. And the reason for that lay in the fact that Seamus was undergoing a steadily growing suspicion that he might be – might very well be – just a little bit… gay. And that – that was _impossible_.

It wasn't so much that Seamus thought it impossible for someone to be gay. He understood that it happened that some blokes fancied blokes and some girls fancied girls instead of blokes, but he'd never thought all that much about it. He'd certainly never considered that such circumstances could apply to him. He hadn't wanted it to, had never wanted or even been resigned to the prospect of it happening. It was… it was _horrible_ because… because…

Because his mam, his uncails and aintíns, his grandad and grandmam – all of them would be horrified. Not his dad; for some reason Seamus didn't think his dad would mind quite so much, but his Wizarding side? His pureblood side that cared about that sort of thing?

Mrs Sinéad Finnigan was a practical sort of person. She was loud of mouth – something she'd bequeathed to Seamus, or so he'd been told – stubborn and unyielding, and stood firm in her decisions and perspectives. When Sinéad Finnigan had an opinion, not only did she stick by it but she made certain that everyone around her knew about it and knew it was the _right_ opinion.

Contrary to what was typical of purebloods, Seamus' mam wasn't prejudiced against Muggles and Muggleborns. Not in the least, in fact, evidenced for the fact that she'd married a Muggle. For some reason, she just didn't have that inhibition, didn't consider Muggles 'beneath' her as so many pureblood families did. Seamus was happy for that, for he'd never felt any such aversion towards Muggles either and it would have just made things awkward and tense between them if she had been. Maybe he didn't because he'd been raised otherwise?

It would be awkward if she found out that Seamus thought – was rapidly coming to the conclusion that – he was gay. His mam wasn't prejudiced against Muggles, but homosexuals? She called in unnatural. Wrong. An abomination and directly against the 'proper order of things'. Seamus felt physically nauseated when he thought about the possibility of her or the rest of his Wizarding family finding out. Sinéad Finnigan wasn't a cruel person, but stubborn? Yes. Yes, she was indeed.

Seamus' suspicions had begun slowly. Small. Considering and baffling, and aroused from Eoghan's words. Understanding had been just as slow to unfurl; Seamus had never claimed to be a particularly smart person, nor exceptionally insightful, so it had indeed been slow. But then the pieces had begun to click into place and it hit him.

He remembered his cousins' frowns and confusion, the situation and what they'd been talking about, and he saw what was wrong with his own words as he hadn't at the time. That it had nothing, or at least very little, to do with the fact that he had chosen Krum as a _Bulgarian_.

Seamus really thought about what it meant that he hadn't been 'distracted' by the Veela at the quidditch match. He thought about how he'd never quite been interested in girls and was more inclined to gravitate towards other boys his age because that was just how it was. He wasn't uncomfortable with girls exactly and in the instance of Hannah Abbott and Susan Bones he found their company actually quite amiable, but they just weren't as interesting as boys. Even when those boys did talk so _boringly_ about girls that weren't even there.

Then had come the revelation of the Triwizard Tournament, the arrival of the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students. The Veela girl who had struck most of the boys in the hall dumb but Seamus had been unaffected by – again – and the appearance of Viktor Krum, who seemed to take on a new light now after having seen him play in person. Seamus found it nearly impossible to take his eyes off the older boy. That _Viktor Krum_ was at their school? Incredible.

That had probably been the worst part. The nauseous feeling Seamus got in his gut at the understanding of what that meant, and understanding of that which he'd never considered before, had silenced him for the rest of the welcoming dinner. It was enough that he knew Dean had noticed; he'd even asked him what was wrong, and had thence proceeded to frown worriedly at Seamus for the rest of the night when he'd only mutely shaken his head. It was that open concern from his friend that pushed Seamus into attempting to conceal his self-disgust and the horror at his understanding. He really wished he could talk to Eoghan but didn't feel comfortable conveying his thoughts in a letter.

Seamus needed to talk to someone about it. He needed to voice his fears and ask for help on deciding what the hell he was supposed to do. Unfortunately, Seamus knew himself well enough to acknowledge that in this situation at least he wouldn't be able to talk. Not at all. Not even to Dean.

The early weeks of his understanding had been a practice in hiding his thoughts and feelings. Seamus had never been good at that. He'd always worn his heart on his sleeve as his dad had called. He doubted he did an entirely good job of it, but only Dean seemed to notice enough to show actual concern. Which he did, but only silently until the arrival of the other schools for the Triwizard Tournament.

Thankfully, the tournament itself provided just the diversion that Seamus needed. What followed the night of the champion revelation was even more startling and served to only divert further.

At the night of the champions' choosing, upheaval arose once more. Following Ron, Hermione and Neville from the Great Hall alongside the rest of the Gryffindor students back towards the tower, Seamus walked alongside Dean but couldn't help glancing over his shoulder time and time again in the direction that Harry had disappeared. There was nothing but a gradually emptying hall, the bowed heads of whispering students similarly glancing over their shoulders in the direction Harry and Cedric had gone.

Harry. More Harry than Cedric, the Hufflepuff senior boy barely a familiar face. But _Harry_ had been picked for the Triwizard Tournament. Seamus didn't quite know how in Merlin's name he'd even managed to put his name in the Goblet and if he had or how it was even possible for a fourteen year old to compete, but the situation effectively gave him a momentary reprieve from his own problems. Harry really was pretty unfortunate when it came to shit going down at the school.

They were halfway up to Gryffindor Tower when Dean spoke. "What are you thinking about?"

Seamus glanced towards him. Dean had spoken in the same tone that he had to ask over the last few days if Seamus was 'okay' and if something had happened that was worrying him. It was the tone that perfectly fit the expression he'd been casting Seamus' way all year. Except that at least this time Seamus considered that he had something to question. Or at least something to question that Seamus could answer.

Frowning, Seamus turned his attention momentarily towards Ron and Hermione up ahead of him. They'd left Neville a little ways behind– or maybe Neville had dropped behind them for the tension that was visibly hanging in the air. Seamus swore he could almost see it. Hermione was whispering something to Ron, and what Seamus could see of her profile tightened in a frown. She appeared on the verge of physically pushing Ron to get his attention, for attention he was not giving her. It wasn't difficult to discern where that tangible tension arose from.

Ron's words, his mutter likely spoken more to himself than to anyone in particular, arose in the forefront of Seamus' mind from where he'd muttered in the Great Hall. "Why didn't he tell me?" Then, a moment later and coupled by a narrowing of his eyes that made Seamus uneasy to look upon, he'd scowled. "Of _course_ he'd get chosen for it."

Seamus didn't like that. He didn't like it at all. Ron was Harry's best friend, and they'd been as thick as thieves for years now. At times it seemed to be more 'the pair' and Hermione, even if Hermione was an integral part of their trio. Ron being angry with Harry, openly resentful and accusatory, was… it felt wrong.

Glancing at Dean sidelong, Seamus frowned. "Ron's pissed off at Harry."

Dean stared at him for a moment as they walked before nodding slowly. "Yeah, I picked up on that."

"No, like, really pissed off at him."

"Yeah, I picked up on that too."

Seamus paused, eyes trained on the back of Ron's head. He could almost see the angry thoughts swirling beneath his crop of red hair. "He's… he thinks Harry put his name in the Goblet of Fire."

Dean was silent for a few steps before speaking quietly. "You don't think so?"

From his tone, Seamus got the feeling that Dean didn't altogether believe it either. When he glanced towards his friend once more, Seamus knew it. That knowledge in itself was heartening; Seamus wasn't the only one to think that Harry wasn't the sort of person to do something like that. Harry didn't make a show of doing anything outstanding and eye-catching. He didn't like being the centre of attention and Seamus suspected that such extended to the so-called eternal glory that would be a product of winning the tournament. It didn't really explain how his name had come out of the Goblet in the first place, but Seamus was fairly certain of the fact that it wasn't as entirely understandable as Ron – and many of their surrounding housemates from what he could overhear – considered it as being.

It was strange that Ron would think such a thing of Harry. Weren't they best friends? Seamus liked to think that he knew Dean well enough to know what he would have done in a situation like that. That Ron didn't was… it was definitely _wrong_.

Seamus admired Harry. He admired his quidditch skills, the fact that, even though it was kind of stupid of him, he was the sort of brave, courageous person who would immediately throw himself into a fight to defend his friend. Seamus _liked_ him too, simply as a person, and even if that liking did take on something of a new and gut-clenching meaning with what he'd come to learn of himself, Seamus could admit that much. He didn't think, and didn't want to think, that Harry would do something like that.

Scrubbing a hand through his hair, Seamus felt his frown deepen before glancing back towards Dean. They'd just turned into the corridor leading to Gryffindor Tower so he dropped his voice to avoid being heard. "Harry wouldn't do something like that, I think."

"Not even for fame and glory?" Dean asked, and for some reason it sounded to Seamus as though his answers were being tested. Dean's deliberately blank expression was something of a give away.

Seamus frowned more deeply, pulling up to a stop a little behind Neville as the students before him slowed to file into the portrait hole. Ron nearly clipped the top of his head for standing so ramrod straight. "Harry wouldn't do something like that," he repeated, more firmly this time.

Dean slowly nodded. "I think you might be right."

The common room was a confusing mixture of hushed, anxious, attentive and bordering on seething anger from the moment it was flooded with students. Seamus didn't feel comfortable in the slightest. No situation was a good one when it couldn't be soothed by a joke, a light-hearted comment, and heaved sigh and a, "Well, that was fun. Moving on?" Seamus didn't like it one bit, and even less so because physical anger seemed to radiate from all directions. He was actually thankful when Ron stood up to take his leave to the dormitory, Hermione reaching wordlessly after him but catching herself before following and Neville slinking in his wake. Seamus exchanged a silent glance with Dean before they both followed right behind. More than one set of eyes followed their communal departure.

Ron had already cracked by the time Seamus stepped into the dorm. "… don't understand why he couldn't have just told me."

"Maybe – look, Ron, maybe he just –"

"I mean, I'm his best friend, aren't I? We tell each other everything. Or at least I thought we were. But now…"

"You still are, you know." Dean was speaking almost before he stepped into the room. With that mature tone that he sometimes adopted, calm and soothing, it was as though he spoke to a flighty colt. Seamus recognised it from how Dean sometimes addressed him, from how he had been addressing him over the past few weeks. Strangely, it didn't feel as annoying or patronising as it perhaps should have.

Ron glanced up at there entrance and Seamus found himself slowing in step as they entered. Ron's cheeks was flushed red, the glare he'd worn since leaving the Great Hall firmly affixed and deepened further, and a slight curl to his lip bespoke hearty anger if ever Seamus had seen it. And he'd certainly seen it, what with witnessing his great-uncail Niall's rage on more than one occasion over the years. He had, unfortunately, passed it on to several of his descendants.

"How can you say that?" Ron demanded. "If he was my friend, he could have at least told me what he was planning to do."

"Did you maybe think that he didn't do it?" Dean asked. It was usually the other way around with Seamus and Dean, Seamus being the more vocal of the two of them, but in this instance Seamus was more than happy to let Dean take the reigns in talking to Ron. He knew himself well enough to know that he effectively sucked in such situations.

Ron's scowl deepened further, and Seamus was suddenly very glad that he wasn't on the receiving end of his anger. Tantrums he'd put up with from Fergus more than enough over the years, but that was merely whinging and whining. Ron's fury was something else entirely. "You know it's impossible for his name to be pulled out unless he put it in there. Hermione said so."

"Yeah, and Hermione also said that the age line was impossible for anyone under the age of seventeen to cross," Dean reasoned.

"Well then, how else did he get it in there?"

"Maybe he didn't –"

"I mean, you'd think that if he'd worked out a way he would have _told_ me."

"Ron –"

"Even if, I mean, of _course_ he'd be more likely to be picked than me, but he could have told me, you know? I could have at least had an equal chance." Ron's face was growing even more flushed, his freckles standing out starkly. Seamus shifted awkwardly where he stood. He hadn't noticed he'd moved already, and only did then when he realised he'd half crept behind Dean like a dog slinking away from its angry owner. He had to forcibly stop himself from taking another creeping step.

Dean was still as calm and collected as he had been before as he continued. "Listen, Ron, I don't think that –"

"Or maybe he didn't want me to go in it with him. Maybe he just wanted to do it all himself." Ron overrode Dean as though he hadn't heard him at all, which, from the expression he wore, the glaring at the closed dormitory door over Dean's shoulder, he likely hadn't. "That must be it. He wanted to just do it himself. To what? To prove something? What else does he have to prove? And I thought I was his _friend_."

"Ron," Dean began once more, but he was cut off once more but Ron's sharp inhalation.

"Maybe it was the cloak. Maybe that was it." Ron made a sound like a growl and even from across the dormitory Seamus saw his eyes flash. "That's so unfair. We could still both fit under it. Why wouldn't he –?"

"The cloak?" Neville asked nervously. His eyes were wide and, as Seamus was still struggling not to do behind Dean, he appeared to be attempting to hide behind the corner post of his bed as he peered at Ron. "What do you mean the cloak?"

But Ron wasn't listening. He likely didn't hear Neville's question at all. Instead, with an unintelligible grumble to himself, he turned and stalked across the remaining distance to his bed and threw himself down on top of it. The gesture was as clear as his abrupt rolling over. _Don't talk to me anymore._

Seamus didn't want to leave it like that. It felt wrong, _very_ wrong, for Ron to be so angry with Harry. Sure, Harry might have somehow managed to get over the age line – Harry was weirdly brilliant sometimes, so Seamus wouldn't put it past him – but even if he had, why? Seamus didn't know and he sorely wanted to ask Harry when he returned.

Unfortunately, when Harry did finally make his way up to the dormitory, it was for Ron to immediately jump into aggressive accusation. Their exchange was cutting, Harry at first confused, then defensive, then visibly enraged. When Ron had once more withdrawn from the argument, Harry was left seething. Seamus felt the urge to cross the room towards him, to finally ask his questions, but something about Harry's expression warned him not to. He was angry, and Seamus feared for the safety of his own head in that he thought Harry likely to bite it off should he approach him.

More than that, however, another thought arose to the forefront of Seamus' mind. That he felt an urge to go and comfort Harry, someone he'd always admired in a friendly kind of way, and that such comforting might not be of the purest intentions. That he might be urged by the wrong desire to offer consolation or express his confusion or support his as was clearly Ron currently unable. That it was his wronge-ness that urged him forth.

It was that which paused Seamus in step. That, and the fact that, from that moment, it seemed very much like Harry hated just about everyone. That maybe he didn't want to be comforted at all. Seamus was slightly alleviated of some of his guilt for not acting by voicing his concerns and Dean considering them valid. Dean was similarly paused by such misgivings, even when the entire school seemed to turn against Harry, and Seamus felt almost justified for biting his tongue. Dean wasn't the kind of person to act out baselessly. Besides, Seamus reasoned to himself that when Harry was more receptive to any form of approach he would attempt it.

Except that Harry grew only angrier, more clearly resentful, and isolated himself more and more with each passing day. Seamus wondered if he even realised the physical cloud of repulsion that seemed to hang around him, excluding everyone with the exception of Hermione. Seamus felt almost scared to talk to him. Maybe Harry really would bite his head off.

At least, that was the justification that he gave himself. It was easier to consider than the prospect of his own cowardice, or the need to protect both himself and Harry from any untoward inclinations. That latter in particular Seamus couldn't allow.

* * *

A/N: I hope you're liking it, dear readers! If you are, please, I know I'll probably sound like a broken record if I say this too much, but please please PLEASE leave a review to let me know your thoughts. It means so much.

Thanks xx


	5. Chapter 5 - Fourth Year - Part II

A/N: Look at me, posting so early :p I'm not sure if this will become a regular thing, but yeah.

Just a WARNING, this chapter contains bullying and homophobia. Horribly, I know, but heads up cause it's coming anyway.

* * *

 **Chapter 5: Fourth Year - Part II**

A sense of relief washed through the entirety of Gryffindor Tower when Harry and Ron finally overcame their differences, and not only because it meant that a grumbling and resentful Ron was no longer tagging alongside Seamus and Dean all the time. And when everyone else overcame those same differences, for that matter, for Seamus could admit with more than a hint of sheepishness that their house at large had kind of been a bunch of prats to Harry. Even if Seamus – and Dean, he knew – hadn't particularly wanted to exclude Harry, the fact of the matter was that they had.

It was a horrible feeling, but Seamus felt that he could accept his failing and work to make up for it. At least to a degree.

More than just the situation with Harry was looking up, however. Since the First Task in which Harry had to face a bloody _dragon_ , Seamus felt as though he'd had a touch of perspective impressed upon him. It was true that his situation sucked. Really sucked, even, because the more he thought about it the more Seamus was coming to realise that he was… he was, in fact… _gay_. That he didn't fancy girls like his dorm mates did, and that boys were just more interesting. That they captured his interest in ways that girls just didn't. That if he was going to take interesting in _some_ one, he inevitably found himself staring at a boy.

It had taken a dragon nearly eating his friend for Seamus to realise that his identity crisis was just slightly less consequential when pitted against potential death or mutilation. Though not entirely irrelevant or unimportant, and though it still made Seamus nauseous to think about – or to consider his mam finding out, dear Merlin – he could deal with it. So long as he strove to ignore it as much as possible, he could.

And he did. At least until the situation with the Yule Ball arose.

That in itself was horrifying, and for more than the fact that it involved asking a date to attend with him. There was excitement in the air, and in their dorm of a night even Neville participated in discussions of what girls they'd like to ask, commiserated with Ron for his pining after that Veela Beauxbatons champion Delacour or whatever her name was, and Harry's despondency at his own dating skills. Seamus found himself thoroughly vexed when Dean brought up the subject with him – well, he asked Seamus and Neville both, being the two in his general vicinity – and asked who he was going with. He didn't know why it annoyed him so much, but he felt the rising need to divert the subject. Especially when Neville brought up Ginny.

"Wait, what?" Dean's eyebrows rose incredulously.

Neville nodded in a show of embarrassment and dropped his eyes down to his breakfast. Their conversation was likely largely unheard due to the surrounding noise of the rest of their fellow breakfast-goers, but he still lowered his voice as he continued. "Yeah, well, you know. I just figured that she was Ron's sister and all so it might be less, um… awkward."

"Less awkward than asking your mate's sister?" Seamus said with a smirk. Well, in this instance was kind of amusing. Or at least it was until Dean continued.

"How did you ask her?" He asked, his voice more curious that teasing. Seamus couldn't help but spare him a frown.

Neville shrugged uncomfortably. "I just, you know… asked her."

"You just asked her," Seamus echoed. His smirk felt slightly forced now under the radiant heat of Dean's intent stare.

"Yeah. 'Cause third years and under aren't allowed to go to the Ball unless they get asked, so I said maybe if she came with me then she could get in. Or something."

"Oh, so… you don't fancy her?" Dean asked. Strangely, he sounded slightly relieved for that fact, and that annoyance rose within Seamus once more. He had to struggle to vanquish the feeling that accompanied his sudden urge to frown.

Neville flushed brightly, enough that Seamus found his smirk grow vaguely natural once more. "No! I mean, I just – Ginny's great and all, and I do really like her and – she's my friend, but… I guess she's – she's just –"

"Just a friend, like?" Seamus supplied, more helpfully than he'd perhaps intended.

Neville spared him a grateful glance. "Yeah. Just a friend."

Dean nodded slowly, his face a confusion of expressions that Seamus had to forcibly drag his attention away from for the annoyance it for some reason provoked from him once more. He was glad he did, for a moment later Dean turned towards him. "What about you, Seam? Had anymore thoughts on who you're going to ask."

Seamus didn't quite manage to bite back his frustrated sigh. He knew Dean wasn't fooled by the attempt either for the surprised blinking that he offered before making to speak. Seamus hurried to override him. "No, I haven't. But I might. Maybe I'll take a leaf out of Neville's book and just ask someone, like." And with that he rose from the table, slung his bag over his shoulder and strode away from the table. He resolutely ignored Dean's startled "Hey, Seamus –" and the following, "You haven't finished your breakfast!"

With the exception of those leading directly from the common rooms to the Great Hall, the corridors were largely empty at that time of the day. Seamus was grateful for that as it meant that on his way to Charms he could draw his wand and vent his frustration through little bursts of magic. He'd discovered that such releases of magic had something of a soothing effect upon him, and he'd used the method with increasing frequency over the past few months. Nothing significant, simply brief, undirected swirls of his wand that produced little sparks, sometimes flames, occasionally little pops of minute explosions. That was something else that Seamus had come to realise; he had a tendency towards pyrotechnics. Making fire seemed to come easily to him. Maybe that was why he was so prone to exploding things?

It was somewhere between the Great Hall and Charms, upon the fourth floor he thought, though was hardly keeping track, that Seamus' venting was interrupted by voices. His momentary annoyance was pushed aside by the slight hysteria of one voice and the sneering undertones of the other two. The first he recognised as belonging to Lavender Brown.

Quite without his direct intention, Seamus found himself striding towards the voices. He rounded the corner as they cleared and distinct words could be discerned. Pausing in step, he beheld a confrontation between Lavender and two of the Slytherin girls in their year; he thought it was Parkinson and Greengrass but had never been interested enough to Slytherin's house members to recall exactly which one was which. It didn't help his confusion that they were both blonde.

"… stupid cow, I bet you couldn't even if you wanted to," one of the Slytherin's sneered. Seamus thought it might have been Parkinson.

"I can! I can too!" Lavender replied, her voice pitched higher than it should have been to an almost ear-splittingly shrill tone. "I'm – I'm just waiting for the right person to – to ask me."

The Slytherin girls exchanged nearly identical smirks before turning back to her. The other one, Greengrass, spoke this time. "The right person, hm? Might be a little hard since I don't think any other filthy lesbian scum go to this school."

Seamus felt himself freeze even as he was already paused in step. They were… the two girls were… Wait, was Lavender…? Seamus recognised the derogatory use of the term – of course he did – and felt an immediate upwelling of empathy for Lavender, even if the accusation happened to lack truth. He doubted it was true, too; he'd overheard Lavender's pining too often, seen it appear far too genuine, to believe it merely a farce to hide her sexuality.

Lavender's voice impossibly grew higher until it was more of a squeak. "I'm not! I'm not a – a lesbian –"

"She is," Parkinson stage-whispered to Greengrass. "Otherwise she'd have a date already. Any girl worth her pride as a woman would have a date by now."

"True," Greengrass replied, expression becoming falsely contemplative. "Although, she isn't really much to look at. Maybe she is just a lost cause?"

Seamus couldn't help himself. He was acting before he even realised it, striding forwards with wand raised. With a flick of his wrist, he fired a hex at the two girls, both of whom only had a chance to glance his way before their attention was turned to their abruptly fire-licked hems. Shrieks rose from the pair, followed by blurted exclamations of " _Agumenti!_ " that took several tries to produce a stream of water. The hallway was hissing with steam by the time the flames died, the girls frazzled and breathing heavily.

Seamus stopped at Lavender's side and fastened a glare upon the two Slytherins. He didn't particularly like Lavender, and thought her a little whiney and too much of a gossip, not to mention that she put far too much faith in Trelawney for him to take her seriously, but he felt sorry for her. Lesbian or not, just like him or not, she was being bullied, and Seamus didn't like that. Even outside of the fact that he was defending one from his own house, it was just wrong.

So he stood as straight and tall, folded his arms across his chest and frowned at the two Slytherins as fiercely as he could. He felt just a little bit satisfied that their eyes simultaneously widened, Greengrass' hands tightening in the folds of her robes. "You two don't have to be such a pair of bitches, like. For your information, Lavender's coming with _me_ to the ball."

A moment of silence rung through the corridor in which Greengrass and Parkinson's eyes widened further. Parkinson's mouth opened and closed for a moment and though she seemed incapable of speech she seemed to grow more indignant by the second. Neither managed a word, however, before Greengrass abruptly darted a hand out towards her friend, latched her fingers onto her sleeve and tugged her down the hallway. They disappeared with many a backwards glance thrown over their shoulders.

Seamus watched them go until even the sound of their footsteps faded before slowly turning back towards Lavender. He felt his shoulders sag, deflating in the same instant that his arms dropped from their fold and his frown fell in what he'd realised had been a struggle to affix. When his attention turned upon Lavender, he found himself cringing slightly.

She looked a mess, and that in itself was hard enough to deal with. Seamus wasn't good at comforting others and Lavender appeared in sore need of comforting. Her eyes were watery and red-rimmed, her curly hair turning to frizz as though embodying her frazzled state, and her bottom lip still trembled as though she truly were on the verge of tears.

Worse than that, however, was the gratitude thickly pervading her features. Seamus was terrible at dealing with that just as much as he was with tears. How did someone receive such gratitude? What should he do?

He barely had a moment to register the sight of it however before Lavender was gushing. "Thank you. Thank you, Seamus, you – you really helped me. They were being so – so mean, and I didn't know what to do, and Parvati said she'd meet me at Charms because she had to ask Padma something or other but I should have just waited for her and now you – they – Parkinson and Greengrass were really –" She fizzled off into blubbers that weren't quite tears but weren't far off either.

Seamus found himself taking an unconscious step backwards, his hand rising to scratch awkwardly at the back of his head. "Um… I guess you're welcome?"

Lavender sniffled – oh no, she was actually sniffling – but she somehow managed to keep a hold on her wavering self control enough to offer him a wobbly smile. "Really. Thanks." Another sniff, her hand rising to wipe at her eye, before she glanced up at Seamus once more. Or really just glanced at him, for he wasn't any taller than she was. Seamus didn't like the brightening hopefulness of her expression all that much more than her tears. "So, um… this might be a little awkward."

Seamus blinked, confused. "What will be?"

Lavender flushed slightly, and Seamus had to marvel that she'd somehow gone from being teary-eyed and nearly hysterical to shy and blushing. Then all thoughts of such left his mind as she continued. "Well, you've kind of just told two of the biggest gossips in the school that we're going to the Yule Ball together. That won't stay secret for long."

Seamus blinked again. What? Why would -? What? He gave a mental shake of his head. _Honestly_. Why did girls do that? Sure, boys might tell a fib or an overheard story every now and then – Seamus knew that he himself was more than guilty of doing such – but girls like Lavender, like Parkinson and Greengrass, just seemed to do it so much more often. No, perhaps not even more so much as just… worse. At least when Seamus relayed anything he'd overheard it was quite literally _only_ what he'd heard. From Lavender's words, slightly ominous as they were, he knew that Parkinson and Greengrass wouldn't be spouting it exactly how it was. Which was a shame, really, or at least in some regards; Seamus was quite proud of his _Incendio_ work. He'd always been good with fire.

Lavender was staring at him expectantly with an expression that requested his reply. Seamus didn't know what to say. Should he apologise? He hadn't really have any inclination to ask Lavender to the Ball, or anyone else for that matter. He'd kind of expected to go along with Dean as two bachelor's flying solo and determinedly ignore the fact that if he _were_ going to go with someone it would probably have been a boy. Now he'd gotten himself into a bit of a fix, and all because he'd overheard Lavender being bullied.

No, not just bullied. She'd been taking the brunt of that bullying in the form of accusation for her sexuality. That stung Seamus, hitting just a little too close to home.

Clearing his throat, Seamus resigned himself to the fact that he was caught between a rock and a hard place. He didn't want to go to the Ball with Lavender – or with anyone, really – but then, when she was staring at him like that with her face fading from hope not even slightly as the silence between them ensued, he didn't think he could crush that hope beneath his heel. Seamus was under no illusions that Lavender actually fancied him; he'd never sought a girlfriend and certainly wasn't receptive to one, nor had he overheard talk of anyone taking an interest in him, but she seemed to long to be his date nonetheless.

How embarrassing. If only she knew the real reason for Seamus' hesitancy to find himself a date. Would she be as horrified as he knew his mam would be?

So instead, Seamus took a deep breath and replied. "I guess… would you like to come to the Ball with me, then, Lavender? I mean, officially, like?"

The beaming smile Lavender gave him was positively radiant. Seamus wondered why he felt more than slightly sick.

* * *

"So, I heard what happened with Lavender."

Seamus' head snapped up from the Herbology desk immediately at the sound of Hannah's murmur, swinging his attention towards where she'd sat herself at his side. Her face was open and kind as Hannah always was, but there was a distinctly knowing cast to her expression that thoroughly disconcerted Seamus.

Glancing over his shoulder, he spared a sweeping glance around himself to ensure that no one was within listening distance. They weren't; Dean and half of the rest of the class had taken themselves over towards the stands lining the walls to collect their Bubotubers, and were currently in the process of outfitting themselves with protective gloves for just that purpose. The partners left at the table collectively wore expressions of varying degrees of resignation and foreboding for the lesson to come. No one liked the Bubotubers and the mess they made with the exception of perhaps Neville, but then Neville had always been weird when it came to plants.

Leaning into Hannah, Seamus dropped his voice. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said. He hoped he didn't sound as stupidly guilty as he did to his own ears.

Hannah's slight smile only widened more fully, adding that touch of warm sincerity to her otherwise plain face. Thankfully, she kept her own voice low. "I mean with Lavender. And the Slytherin girls. And how you stepped in and told them you were taking her to the ball because they were calling her names, and –"

"Alright, alright, I get it. You know everything, like," Seamus grumbled, sparing another glance over his shoulder for Dean. His friend had been more than surprised to hear that Seamus had 'asked' Lavender to the Ball, his expression an odd mixture of that shock and something else. Seamus wasn't sure whether he should be offended by his incredulity or not, but either way it didn't make him feel comfortable with that knowledge himself. He almost regretted his actions. Almost. "What about it?"

Hannah tilted her head slightly before reaching a hand forwards to pat Seamus on the arm. It was a strangely intimate gesture, even if it did feel entirely platonic, and reminded Seamus a little of how Dean would sometimes similarly express affection through a pat on the shoulder or a nudge with his elbow. Dean wasn't overly prone to physical displays of such affection, even if Seamus was himself – he knew he himself was more than inclined to leap upon Dean at times and wrap him in a hug, or sling an arm around his shoulders, because it was _comfortable_. That was just how it had always been between them. But even so, Dean would sometimes take the initiative himself with brief touches. It was always in moments of utter sincerity, too, as Seamus fathomed it was in that moment from Hannah.

"I just think it's a really nice thing, what you've done," she said quietly. "Especially considering you didn't want to go with her in the first place."

Seamus didn't know how Hannah knew that but he didn't bother asking. He'd learned quite a long time ago of the intelligence she possessed. Hannah was likely only chosen for her house over Ravenclaw because her innate kindness and fairness trumped that intelligence even further. Shrugging, Seamus turned back to the desk before him and scratched a nail into the pockmarked wood. "It's… whatever. Doesn't really matter, like."

"Maybe not," Hannah said with a nod, "but it's still really nice of you. Even more so as I don't think it would be her as the one you really want to go with."

Seamus glanced at Hannah sidelong, wary suspicion rising as he fiddled with their gardening instruments on the table. "What do you mean by that, exactly?"

"Only that maybe she's not your type."

"Meaning?" Seamus wasn't sure if he wanted to know the answer to the question he posed to her. Not really, but he found he couldn't help but ask.

Hannah didn't reply directly. Instead, she cast a glance over her shoulder in Wayne's direction. Her Herbology partner was heading back across the room, Bubotuber clasped gingerly in his hands and held as far from him as possible while still maintaining his grasp. "Just so you know, Wayne didn't want to ask a girl to the Yule Ball either. I ended up saying I'd go with him because he didn't think he could ask who he really liked to go with him and Susan and me are the only ones who knows why."

She turned back to Seamus, eyes widening slightly, meaningfully, to which Seamus could only stare back blankly. After a moment she sighed and shook her head. "I just felt like I should tell you, Seamus. That I know. Or at least I think I know, if my suspicions are correct. I don't want you to think you're entirely alone in this, seeing as I know how pureblood families can be sometimes." Then without another word she turned, smiled brightly at Wayne, and skirted back around the desk to his side once more. Seamus was left staring after her with his miniature shears dangling from his hand until Dean arrived back at his side and prodded him into action.

It took the entire Herbology lesson for Seamus to reach the conclusion that Hannah _definitely_ knew about his dilemma. Knew, had somehow deduced when Seamus had only just realised earlier that year, and seemed alright with it. She didn't appear to have told anyone, and had only mentioned it to him before leaving with a smile and a suggestion of her muteness on the matter.

Seamus didn't know if he was more grateful or horrified for Hannah's revelation. It seemed that gradually more and more people were just happening to realise: first Eoghan, even before Seamus himself, then Hannah. Seamus wondered how much longer his attempts to hide reality would last. It made him sick to contemplate.

* * *

The Great Hall had been transformed into an ice palace. Stalagmites and stalactites jutted from every edged surface, the floors where smoothed into non-slip ice for a dance floor, and the general theme of Christmas pervaded the air as thickly as the snowflakes falling from overhead that reached only a middling distance from the ground before dissipating. The usual Christmas trees lined the walls, though the consistent glow of whiteness and unshakeable winter blanketed them in magical snow more thickly than usual.

Scattered throughout the room was a collection of round tables, each seating every student from Hogwarts, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang from fourth year and above. Where the head table usually stood was an exceptionally larger version of itself, including not only all of the professors but also the Triwizard champions. Seamus found himself unable to bite back a snort the first time he looked up and saw Harry sitting next to Parvati. Harry had never liked being in the spotlight and he appeared thoroughly discomforted to be seated on the raised dais. Seamus wondered if he realised how awkward he looked.

Seamus himself was seated half a room away with a horde of his own year mates. He'd made good his claim to bring Lavender to the ball and she was dressed prettily in pale pink dress-robes and a matching, elaborate bow in her hair that Seamus thought was just a little unnecessary. At her side and chattering as fast as Lavender was speaking to her, Padma Patil was turned entirely away from her date, Ron, who in turn appeared to be largely ignoring her to focus upon his dinner and the head table in equal measures. Seamus wasn't sure if his scowl was for something unpalatable on his plate or something up at the head table. Probably the fact that Hermione was the date of _Viktor Krum,_ if the words Seamus had overheard were any indication.

Hermione. With Viktor Krum. Seamus couldn't quite believe that either and didn't let himself look in the direction of the head table more than he had to. Something about Krum just seemed somehow triggering for him, and not in a good way. Too many memories of realisations.

At the rest of their table sat Hannah and Wayne, Neville and Ginny, Justin Finch-Fletchely and Sue Li alongside Megan Jones and Ernie MacMillan, and Dean and Susan Bones. It wasn't the entirety of the fourth year cohort, with most of the Ravenclaws and Slytherins sitting together at an adjacent table, but they made up the majority of two of the houses.

Dean was seated at Seamus' side. They'd been momentarily awkward after Seamus had walked out of the Great Hall some weeks ago before finding Lavender, and even though they still worked together in class, Dean had been even more clearly discomforted when Seamus had told him that he had a date to the Yule Ball. Seamus didn't really understand why; was he jealous that Seamus had gotten a date before him? Or that it was with Lavender? Did Dean fancy Lavender? Surely not. He'd never expressed any interest in her before, not even in their late night discussions in the dormitory of which Seamus had only recently come to understand why he'd found them both discomforting and a little boring.

But no, Dean didn't appear jealous. Seamus doubted Dean ever actually got truly jealous. He wasn't the sort of person to become disgruntled by what others had and he lacked, just as he wasn't the sort to get particularly angry, or to raise his voice. Or to allow an awkward situation to ensue, Seamus realised when he'd so abruptly forced them to overcome their brief, disgruntled spat. It was entirely Dean who had encouraged their resolution. Seamus doubted Dean considered it much of a spat at all, even; he seemed to build a bridge over the disruption and discard it with little enough effort.

Seamus was as surprised that Dean had been about Lavender when he'd heard that he was going with Susan. Surprised, and just a little… what? He didn't know, could only feel a noticeable discomfort in his gut region, but whatever it had been was vanquished moments after Dean had told him.

Adopting his easy grin, Dean had shrugged. "Yeah, well, Susan and me were basically the only two people we knew who didn't have dates yet so we just agreed to go together as friends or whatever. Better than going alone, right?"

Seamus had nodded and agreed readily enough. He couldn't really understand why he felt relieved for the fact but discarded the thought before considering it too deeply. Now he was only relieved that their slight discord had been abated. The Yule Ball would have certainly been less entertaining had he and Dean not been on comfortable terms, especially with Lavender thoroughly distracted with Padma. It appeared that her desire for Seamus to be her date was founded entirely upon her lack of desire to come alone, and after that worry was satisfied she'd effectively discarded him.

Seamus didn't mind. Lavender spoke too loudly and too fast for him to get a word in edgewise anyway. He was more than happy to talk with his Hufflepuff friends instead. And Dean.

"It's called a cummerbund," Dean was saying with exasperation as they finished off their dinner, though he'd long since given up any attempt at maintaining his straight face.

Seamus' grin widened as he poked at his friend's side and the satin sash beneath. "It's like a bloke's version of an old-fashioned corset, is what it looks like."

"It's not a corset, Seam. It's not even tight."

"I'm just saying what it looks like. Why are you even wearing it?"

Dean shrugged, leaning back in his chair a bit to adjust his 'cummerbund'. He was wearing dress robes, as were all around him – black and sleek – but beneath that he'd outfitted himself something of a Muggle tuxedo, tie and all. And cummerbund, which Seamus hadn't been able to quite look past. He'd never known what those things were called.

"Mum sent it to me," Dean said. "I don't question her taste. She's got a good eye for fashion."

Seamus nodded sincerely in reply. At least that he could agree with; Dean really did look good in his dress robes, Muggle suit beneath and all, even if he was probably the only one to be dressed in such a fashion. Seamus wondered if it was weird of him to think that, to appreciate his friend's appearance. Was that wrong? Should he smother such thoughts?

"She does," Susan agreed at his side. She nodded appreciatively, though her crooked smile suggested her words were as teasing as they were sincere. "But I think it's a happy coincidence that you're wearing it. We match, now."

"Did you plan that, like?" Seamus asked, leaning around Dean to raise an eyebrow at Susan. She was wearing deep red dress robes that offset her strawberry blonde hair in a way that didn't clash in the slightest. Seamus didn't think he had much of an eye for fashion either, but he was fairly certain red and redhead wasn't supposed to go together. It didn't work half as well for Ron; he was a disaster of discordant colours.

Susan smirked at him, raising her own eyebrow in return. "What, do you think I have a whole wardrobe of dress robes hanging up in my dormitory that I can swap and change depending on my partner's outfit?"

"I don't know. Do you?"

"I change for no man!" Susan exclaimed in a way that could have been indignant except that she dissolved into laughter a moment later. Hannah offered her an appreciative high-five that she took with a resounding smack that turned a few curious heads.

"Did you change yours, then, Dean?" Wayne asked curiously, ignoring his two best friends' continuation into self-righteous discussion. The usually quiet boy seemed strangely comfortable at the ball and the change was remarkable. He'd dressed himself up in navy dress robes that set off his eyes, managed to tame his dark curls somehow in a way that Seamus would never bother with his own hair – not even or perhaps especially not for a ball – and was leaning forwards with elbows on the table to participate in the conversation more fully. When Seamus glanced towards him, he offered him a small smile that caused Seamus to blink and struggle not to quickly look away. He was friends with Wayne but didn't know him very well. Seamus was closer to Hannah too. And more than that…

 _He's gay. Hannah didn't say it exactly, but she still basically told me he's gay_. _Like – like me._ How was Seamus supposed to respond to that? Was he supposed to act differently? Was he supposed to see Wayne in a different way? What was expected of him, now that they were essentially and unexpectedly two birds of a feather? More than that, did Wayne know about Seamus? If Hannah knew, had she told Wayne?

Seamus wasn't sure. He wasn't sure what to do, how to think, or how to respond. He was nervous at the prospect of what anyone would think; Wayne, Hannah, Susan, Dean, because _God,_ Dean knowing was terrifying. He was scared, even. Seamus didn't think that he did, that he _should_ , see Wayne any differently, even if he was gay. Even if Seamus' mam always scowled and shook her head, frowning at what she considered as being 'so unnatural' and 'wrong'. Wayne didn't seem unnatural. He didn't see wrong, or even notably different to any other boy in their year. Had Hannah not suggested it, Seamus wouldn't have suspected him to be queer at all. Did that make him daft? Was he just blind to whatever it was his mam saw?

Either way, until he made a firm decision on the matter, Seamus had resolved not to act any differently to how he usually did. It was surprisingly easy when it came to Wayne. He was one of the least demanding people Seamus had ever met, and though he voiced his opinion and requests, such requests were more often fulfilled because he was just a nice bloke and it felt almost wrong not to help him out or take him up on his suggestion. Wayne was, in essence, a typical Hufflepuff.

Instead, Seamus just spared him grin, shrugging aside his touch of awkwardness. "Maybe he did, like. Maybe he has a whole rack of cumberbands in his trunk that I just don't know about."

"It's pronounced cummerbund, Seam," Dean said with a sigh.

Wayne smiled widely back at Seamus. "Can we trust you to be our infiltrator, Seamus?"

Seamus saluted him with a touch of his fork to forehead. "I'll take it as my mission, then."

"You're not getting anywhere near my trunk," Dean warned, though his lips quivered in an attempt to withhold his smile.

"Why? Hiding something?"

"No, I just don't want you touching my stuff."

"I always touch your stuff. You've never had a problem with it before, like."

"I don't 'not have a problem with it'. It's just that you wouldn't stop even if I asked you to."

Seamus waved his fork at Dean triumphantly. "Ah, see? So you admit that there's no way to stop me?"

Dean rolled his eyes as the rest of their friends laughed. "I don't think anyone could stop you from doing anything ever, Seamus."

Dessert arrived shortly after, replacing scraped plates with picture-perfect assemblages of bright colours and dusted icing sugar. Murmurs of appreciation rose as everyone in the hall momentarily hushed their conversations to tuck in.

"I don't even know what this is, but I like it," Hannah said, forking a bite of her sandwich-like dessert into her mouth with a hum.

"Haven't you ever had _mille-feuille_ before?" Susan asked.

"Mille-what?" Dean asked, bemused.

"It's French," Susan clarified.

Seamus nodded, taking a bite of his crumble. "Yeah, sort of like a vanilla slice pastry thing. Or a custard slice, maybe. It's really good."

Dean glanced towards him, eyebrows raised. "How do you know that?"

"Oi, I'm not all ignorant, like."

"I'm not saying you're ignorant, just very Irish."

"Meaning?"

"I didn't realise you actually tried food from other cultures." He dodged as Seamus flicked a piece of his crumble with a well-aimed fire of his spoon. It bypassed Dean and snagged in Susan's hair.

"Thank you for that, Seamus," she said with surprising mildness.

"You're welcome. Any time. Can I have it back, though, like? It's a waste to just get rid of it. It's really good."

"Ew, Seam, don't, that's disgusting," Dean laughed.

Susan, however, pinned Seamus with a stare, plucked the spot of crumble from her hair and promptly ate it. Dean stared at her for a moment before he burst out laughing even more loudly. He wasn't the only one to do so, and Seamus found himself clutching his belly as he bowed over himself in amusement.

"Is that the Weird Sisters?" Seamus heard Ginny ask sometime later from across the table, drawing his attention from where he was smirking at Ron as he stabbed the crumbs of his own _mille-feuille_ with a glare it really didn't deserve. He turned in the direction that he saw Ginny gesture, perking up in delight.

As it happened, it was the Weird Sisters. Then flowed smoothly into the hall as dessert was slowly wrapping up and, to the gradual rise in volume of curious audience, set about adding music to the dining ambiance. Soon it wasn't only their table that had their attention drawn, and Seamus hardly even noticed when the plates vanished from before them.

"Does this mean we get to dance now?" Lavender asked. To Padma, of course, but Seamus shrugged himself. He didn't really need to reply, however, for at an unspoken work – probably some sort of mental command or something from Dumbledore, which Seamus wouldn't put past him – all seated at the head table rose from their seats and descended to ring the dance floor. There was a pause in the music, a slight waver in which the champions stepped forwards as though urged into the open space, and then the music began again.

Harry looked terrified and even more awkward than he had before. Seamus wondered how it was even possible he was scared when he'd faced a dragon and bloody well overcome it barely weeks before but apparently it was. Seamus found himself sniggering and struggling to muffle his chuckles in Dean's shoulder at his side. Dean wasn't helping in the slightest, and mostly because he appeared to be struggling to withhold his own laughter. Dean wasn't a mean person, and he wouldn't tease other people quite as readily as Seamus knew himself guilty of, but it really was pretty hilarious to see the stark terror on Harry's face as he somehow managed to save himself and Parvati from slipping mid-spin.

A nudge at Seamus' side – not from Dean, but from his other side – drew his attention just as the song picked up tempo and volume slightly and a number of other couples rose from their seats to flow onto the dance floor. Seamus glanced towards Lavender at his side as she withdrew her pointy elbow, her head cocked expectantly.

"What?" Seamus asked.

Lavender sighed, exasperated, but when she replied it wasn't cruelly. "Are you going to ask me to dance? You _are_ my date, after all."

Seamus stared at her for a moment. True, he was at that. He'd almost forgotten since she'd basically ignored each and every one of his attempts to make polite conversation throughout the Ball thus far. Now she wanted his attention?

Glancing back at Dean, Seamus couldn't help but spare his friend a glare for the quivering smirk he wore. He turned back to Lavender and forced a smile onto his face. Then, with flamboyant dramatics, he rose to his feet, offered a flourish and a bow and held out his hand. "Well then, me lady, would you care for a dance?"

Lavender, far from her disregard of earlier that evening, actually giggled in true delight and grasped his hand immediately. It was more she than Seamus that led them onto the rapidly filling dance floor. He heard the sound of Dean asking a similar though less extravagant version of his question, and Susan's reply of "About time. I thought you'd never ask. It's been nearly a whole minute, Dean!" and their laughter that followed. Seamus shook his head, smiling.

Lavender, as it turned out, was a very good dancer. Seamus didn't think he was appalling himself, but he certainly wouldn't have managed half as well if she hadn't been his partner. She must have been practicing, that was his only conclusion, and likely with Parvati in their dormitory every night. Seamus would have to ask Hermione if that was true.

They spun and twirled across the floor, drifting with the music in an alternative sort of waltz to the steady beat of the Weird Sisters' music. Seamus recognised the song and could have sung along to it after hearing his mam play it all summer holidays. He found that such familiarity actually helped with his dance steps. A slide this way to that beat, a turn at that moment because it seemed to fit just right. He drew Lavender into a basic progressive step, which Seamus had learned how to do pretty much since he could walk. Such was the life of a pureblood descendant. Lavender kept up with that pretty well too.

"So you can actually dance!" Lavender announced, probably a bit more loudly than was entirely necessary as they took another turn around the room. It seemed to have taken her an entire dance to realise that fact.

Seamus grinned. "You sound so surprised."

"No, I mean you're actually good at it. You haven't stepped on my feet once."

"Is that supposed to be a compliment, like?"

Lavender blushed a little and giggled. It was a bit of an annoying sound, and he'd had far too many years of she and Parvati emitting such noises from the back of the classroom to consider it otherwise, but Seamus found he didn't mind it so much. He wasn't particularly fond of Lavender but she wasn't appalling company. She was just an average sort of girl. A bit annoying, it was true, but not excessively so. Seamus found that, when he'd come to terms with that realisation, he actually managed to have a bit more fun.

As the songs progressed, so did they. Seamus and Lavender swept past Hannah and Wayne, who clutched at one another in an attempt to remain standing throughout their own giggling. Dean and Susan spun and drifted gracefully enough but Seamus wasn't fooled into believing them experts in the slightest; he knew enough about dancing from his upbringing to know that their steps were of the absolute most basic kind. He spied Harry for a moment but only to catch sight of him leading Parvati off the floor, and had to bite back a laugh for the utter sagging relief he'd assumed when he finally slipped between the safety of the tables.

Beauxbaton's students spun like unfurling flowers in their flaring dress robes, those of Durmstrang with a more rigid but still somehow graceful fashion, and the professors swirling through them in a sedate and deliberate manner that reminded Seamus of his Great-Aintín Abigail. It was a study in people-watching as Seamus saw a whole new side of his fellow students. Malfoy, for example, was a remarkable dancer and seemed to be attempting to make a show of it with Parkinson on his arm, while Michael Corner who was always a bit of a stuck up prat seemed to have been born with not two left feet but three for the dexterity he managed to be tripping himself and… was it Turpin he was dancing with? Seamus was pretty sure it was Turpin but he'd never had all that much to do with the Ravenclaws. He pointed them both out to Lavender who nearly tripped over herself for her giggling.

"Oh, I'm glad I'm not with him then," she said, not exactly cruelly but with genuine relief nonetheless.

"Did he ask you?" Seamus asked curiously, turning her around to avoid Cedric Diggory and what looked like a fifth year girl on his arm. Cedric was a pretty good dancer too.

Lavender's smile died with surprising speed as she shook her head. "No. He didn't."

"Oh, right. 'Cause those Slytherins, like –"

"Yeah," she nodded. "Pair of bitches, those two. Merlin, I hate them. Why do Slytherins have to be so mean?"

Seamus didn't know what to say to that. Clearly even after weeks the confrontation still rubbed a little raw. He shuffled them through a couple of steps before managing a reply. "Well, I guess we showed them, then, yeah?"

Thankfully, his words drew a smile from Lavender. A surprisingly warm smile too, that Seamus had never seen directed towards him before. She looked remarkably pretty and far less ditzy in her teenage girly-ness for it. "Yeah, we did. Thanks, Seamus. Really. Thanks." Her smile widened further in a way that made Seamus feel slightly uncomfortable. It seemed to mean something that he couldn't quite comprehend. He brushed the thought aside, however, continuing with their dance.

Seamus wasn't sure how long they'd been on the floor, the first song rolling into a second, then a third and a fourth, before Lavender finally suggested they pause for drinks. With a nod of agreement he allowed her to lead him back towards their table where, surprisingly, most of their friends were already seated once more. Harry and Ron were off to one side a little, talking in hushed tones with the visibly disgruntled Patil twins nearby.

Seamus paused beside his friends as, abruptly distracted from the thought of getting drinks, Lavender hastened towards Parvati and dropped into the seat beside her. They were lost in a whispering exchange in seconds. Seamus didn't really mind. He didn't feel much obligation towards his date anyway. It hadn't even been a real date in the first place, had it? And besides, he'd danced a fair bit with Lavender. She seemed happy enough. He felt that his job was effectively done.

Instead, Seamus fell into the seat beside Dean, breathing out a heavy sigh that blew at his fringe from his eyes. Dean, talking with Hannah at his other side, glanced his way immediately. He raised an eyebrow with a smile. "Your hair's a mess."

"Is my hair ever not a mess, like?"

Dean's smile widened. "True."

"Fair enough, though, I'd say," Hannah said, leaning around Dean to peer at him. "You were dancing for ages."

"Really?" Seamus glanced over his shoulder towards a clock, towards any clock, and drew a blank. "How long?"

"Nearly an hour."

"Seriously?"

Both of his friends nodded fervently and with more than a hint of amusement. Dean folded his arms across his chest, eyebrow rising further. " _And_ you never told me you danced."

Seamus snorted. "I don't dance."

"You do," Hannah reasoned. "You just did."

Shaking his head, Seamus glanced behind him at the table where he'd spied several glasses of sparkling punch. He grabbed one of the fullest and took a sip. "Not really, like. I know the basics but I think it was probably 'cause Lavender knew what she was doing."

"Takes two to tango," Dean said, then frowned. "And that's my cup."

He made a grab for it but Seamus leaned out of the way of his grasping fingers and he gave up easily enough. Hannah watched them with a smile before continuing. "But where did you learn that, anyway? Did you take dancing lessons as a kid or something?"

"Not hardly. Not by choice."

"But you did?" Dean asked incredulity replacing his supposed disgruntlement that Seamus had stolen his glass. Seamus knew he didn't really care, just as he knew that Dean wouldn't have really cared if he'd made good his words and actually searched his trunk for those cumberband-things.

Seamus shrugged. "It's sort of a pureblood tradition thing."

"What's a pureblood tradition?" Susan asked, leaning into Hannah from where she'd been embedded in conversation with Wayne.

"Dancing," Dean said.

Susan laughed in a bark of genuine amusement. Her eyes sparkled as they fastened upon Seamus. "Oh, sucks for you. You have old blood in your family, then?"

Seamus couldn't even be bothered to frown with annoyance that he didn't feel. He shrugged again and drained Dean's drink. "Don't you too?"

Susan shook her head. "My mum's grandma was pureblood but she wasn't that strict with sticking to their ways. Wayne's more of a pureblood than I am."

"Not really," Wayne said, leaning forwards in his seat as well. "My family hasn't been all that strict with pureblood traditions for generations, even if my mum is a full-pureblood."

"That is so unfair, like. How come I'm the only one who had to learn to dance when I was growing up?" Seamus pouted, but his friends' laughter alleviated any flutter of irritation from him. He found himself laughing and shaking his head alongside them.

They didn't end up going back onto the dance floor. Not by choice but simply because they were distracted by discussion. Seamus found himself enjoying the Hufflepuffs' company more and more the longer he spent with them. It was the first time he'd spent any time with them outside of a classroom or studying environment, and he found himself regretting not doing so before. They really were very nice, even if Susan did have such a sharp wit and intelligence that made him feel like he risked cutting himself whenever he spoke a dangerous comment to her.

Harry and Ron didn't join them, and when Seamus glanced in Lavender's direction he found that she'd disappeared with Parvati somewhere. Padma had vanished too, leaving only his dorm mates who didn't appear to have noticed their absence at all.

"Me dates up and disappeared," he said idly to his friends. Dean and Wayne had rearranged themselves so that they now sat either side of him. Or, more correctly, Dean and Wayne with Hannah on top of Wayne because she'd draped herself around her friend as though it were the most natural thing to do it the world. Which it wasn't. Seamus couldn't imagine himself doing that to Dean, even if he was a girl. Or at least… he did hug him sometimes, or sling an arm around his neck, or lean against him and maybe a little atop of him when they were sitting on the couch or whatever, but that was different.

Susan leaned around Dean from where she'd slid up to the seat at his side and glanced in Harry and Ron's direction. "Huh. Are you that much of an appalling date, Seamus? I thought you were doing well with the dancing."

"Oh, he did fine," Hannah said, sparing Seamus a smile as though she worried that Susan had hurt his feelings. "Lavender just got distracted with Parvati. I think Parvati was a bit upset that Harry didn't want to dance with her again."

"Well, they didn't dance for very long," Wayne said.

Seamus shrugged. "Some people just don't like dancing, like. There's nothing wrong with that."

"You can hardly count yourself as one of those sort of people though, can you, Seam?" Dean teased with a smirk.

"Shut up."

"Does anyone actually want to go for another round?" Susan asked. "I'm kind of in the mood to do something but I'm not sure if it's dancing."

"We could just go for a walk outside or something?" Wayne suggested. "Get away from the noise a little?"

Seamus glanced between his friends as they all shrugged and nodded in varying degrees of assent. Then he stood up immediately; Seamus wasn't much for staying still for too long and though he had been fine for the last however long – had it really been nearly another whole hour of sitting? His quick _Tempus_ Charm said it had been but it hardly felt like it – the prospect of getting up and doing something was enticing. Seamus was leading everyone from the hall before Hannah had even fully climbed off Wayne to follow.

It was cold outside. Freezing, actually, or at least it was until Hannah had the bright idea to cast Warming Charms upon all of their robes. That drove away the worst of it and made it actually somewhat pleasant to walk in crunching steps through the snow, breathing puffy clouds before them as they went. The grounds appeared empty but the trails of disappearing footprints suggested they weren't the first people to take a break from the castle.

Seamus found himself falling into step beside Dean as the three Hufflepuffs dropped behind them, not separate but just in an easier fashion. Seamus suspected it had something to do with the fact that he and Dean ploughed a path through the snow for them but he didn't care. So long as they had the Warming Charms firmly affixed, it didn't really matter, even if Seamus did felt his robes becoming damp.

They were silent for a time, simply drinking in the absence of noise but for the distant echoes radiating from the castle. Dark and silent and kind of relieving. Seamus quite liked the Weird Sisters, and he generally liked being in the thick of things too, but sometimes it was just nice to get out of it all. The sound of the Hufflepuffs' laughter, their voices made slightly unintelligible as they fell behind a ways, suggested they appreciated the reprieve just as much.

"You know, I thought the Yule Ball might have been a bit of a flop, like, what with all the whole 'trying to prove we're good enough' act that the professors are doing," Seamus finally said.

He felt more than saw Dean glance towards him. "What do you mean?"

Seamus shrugged. "Just that, say, McGonagall for instance seems pretty keen to make a good impression with the other schools and stuff. I thought the Ball might end up being, like, a stuffy prat-fest."

Dean snorted with laughter. "Is that even a word?"

Seamus grinned as he glanced towards him. "Who cares?"

They were silent for a moment before Seamus was urged to speak by another passing thought. "Did you and Susan actually dance for that long?"

Dean shrugged a shoulder, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "Yeah, for a bit. Neither of us are much good at dancing."

"Yeah, I know. It was kind of obvious, like."

Dean butted him with a shoulder. "Hey, you, what's the whole superior act?"

"It's not superior, like. You're good at drawing and stuff, Dean, but you're a shit dancer."

Dean actually tipped his head backwards in his laughter. Seamus couldn't help but join in. There was something so infectious about Dean's laugh when he truly lost himself in it. Seamus was always attempting to provoke such a response from him. He liked making others laugh but Dean most of all.

"Thanks for that," Dean said sarcastically a moment later, though he still smiled. "I really appreciate the honesty."

"Any time."

"So I suck at dancing just like you suck at drawing?"

"Pretty much," Seamus said with a further widening of his grin.

Dean gave another snort of laughter. "You're not supposed to just accept that so easily. Come on, fight me on it."

"What's the point, like? It's true and all."

They fell silent for another moment, Seamus glancing over his shoulder at the sound of Susan's laughter. The Hufflepuffs had fallen more than ten steps behind and he could barely hear a hint of their murmured words at all.

Before he knew what he was saying, Seamus spoke. "Say Dean. Do you fancy Susan?"

Dean slowed in step for a moment to glance over his own shoulder. He shook his head quickly enough, however, and started up at a brisk pace once more. "No. No, I don't think so. She's really great and everything but I don't really like her like that."

Seamus nodded. He could understand that. He felt the same way about Susan, though probably for a slightly different reason to Dean. Susan _was_ a nice person, just like her two friends, but he doubted he'd ever think of her like that. Was being gay permanent? Was it a sort of fixed state that Seamus was stuck with or did he sort of… grow out of it over time? Merlin, he hoped he grew out of it, if only because he didn't want to think of what his family would say if they found out he didn't.

"What about you, then?"

Dean's question drew Seamus from his thoughts. He glanced towards him. "What about me?"

"Do you fancy Lavender?"

Seamus was laughing before he could contain the urge. He shook his head fervently. "No way, not at all. She's not as annoying as I thought she was, but I still – like, she's still annoying, yeah? Nah, I don't fancy her." It wasn't the main reason, Seamus knew – he didn't know if he could fancy girls that way, and he certainly never had before – but Lavender's simpering annoyance would surely drive him insane if he had to be around her as much as a boyfriend was supposed to be.

Seamus shoved the thought aside, tamping down the discomfort that always arose at the thought as Dean obliviously nodded in commiseration. "I'll agree to that. I mean, she's not mean of anything. Just –"

"Annoying?"

"Yeah. And in class when her and Parvati are giggling in the back of the room it's kind of –"

"Annoying?"

"Yeah, pretty much. Or in Divination, when they get all up in arms about Trelawney's skills that she completely lacks. It's really just –"

"Annoying?"

Dean rolled his eyes at Seamus, the gesture barely visible for the lights dancing across the grounds and illuminating the snowy plane as they made their way around the school. "Can't you come up with a better description than that?"

Seamus snickered but otherwise didn't comment. Dean continued a moment later. "You know, though, the Hufflepuff girls are all really nice. Even if I don't fancy Susan…"

He trailed off and Seamus felt his gaze snap immediately towards him. For some reason, the thought Dean fancying someone made him feel uncomfortable and agitated in a way that was strangely similar to how he felt when he thought about his… problem. He knew he would have to accept it, that he'd have to accept both of them some day because one, Dean surely wouldn't stay single for long – he really was a top bloke – and two, Seamus really wasn't sure if people ever stopped being gay. But still, it didn't feel good. Not at all. Seamus couldn't explain why. Maybe because it felt like his friend would be taken away from him.

Swallowing, Seamus struggled with his decision to speak the thought that arose in his mind. "Do you fancy Hannah, then, like?"

The speed of Dean's response was somehow relieving. He shook his head immediately, smiling a little ruefully. "No, and I doubt I ever will, either. Nor her me."

Seamus blinked at him for a moment before frowning. "Hey, why not? You're great, why wouldn't she -?"

"I'm retty sure she has a thing for Wayne, Seam," Dean said as though it were obvious.

Seamus stared at him. No. No, that wasn't right. Hannah didn't fancy Wayne, nor he for her. To Seamus it seemed obvious; she hung off Wayne but it wasn't in a romantic way in the slightest. But maybe that was just because he knew it wouldn't happen? That Wayne didn't like girls and Hannah knew and somehow accepted that?

Seamus was shaking his head before he'd even spoken. "No, I don't think so. They're just friends, like."

Dean arched an eyebrow at him, slowing in step so he could turn more fully towards Seamus. "Just friends?"

"Yeah. Just friends."

"You know that?"

"I know that."

"You've asked them?"

Seamus bit back the urge to retaliate with a demand to know why Dean cared. He felt himself growing frustrated for some reason and it worried him that he didn't know exactly why. "No, I haven't, but Hannah told me anyways." It was technically true, if a little bit of a skewed truth.

Dean actually paused in step. His gaze switched back towards the Hufflepuffs, even further behind now but slowly catching up as Seamus and Dean had slowed their own steps. His expression was contemplative. "Maybe you're right. I guess… well, I guess there's kind of a pretty fine line between friends and boyfriend and girlfriend, right?"

Seamus found himself nodding before he really heard Dean's words. Nodding and then processing.

Suddenly, it hit him like a charging hippogriff.

Friends and boyfriend and girlfriends. That they weren't that different. That sometimes, Seamus knew, friends _became_ boyfriend and girlfriend. That such relationships could grow from such and that they were likely stronger for the pre-existing friendship. That Seamus knew for a fact that his own parents had been that way first.

Seamus found himself staring up at Dean instead of towards their friends. He stared and rapidly fell prey to growing horror, because he thought he understood now. He thought he knew why he didn't want Dean to get a girlfriend. People who were gay, they got a boyfriend or girlfriend just the same way as normal people did, right? So that would mean… that could mean that… that if Seamus thought like that about _Dean –_

A sickening tightness squeezed Seamus' gut. Sickening, painful, and flooding him with horror. It wasn't so much a _could_. Not in this case at least. With Dean… when Seamus thought about it that way, when he looked at his friend _that way_ …

Yes, he could very much see it. Very, very much. And as soon as he did, Seamus realised he wanted it. He wanted it badly.

It was horrible.

Without another word, without a second thought, Seamus turned on his heel and flung himself across the grounds at a run. Dean's startled cry followed him a moment later, calls from he and the Hufflepuffs of "Seamus, what's wrong?" and "Are you alright?" Seamus didn't pause. He didn't even look over his shoulder for fear of what he would see. That he might look at Dean and… and… and what? He didn't know but he didn't want to find out.

They'd made it most of the way around the castle in their wandering so it wasn't a long flight back to the Entrance Hall. Seamus spilled into the warmth that chewed through Hannah's fading Warming Charm and sped up the right-hand stairwell towards the nearest bathroom. He burst through the door and nearly fell into the sink as he made a grab for it. A moment later and he was splashing water on his face, gasping in heavy breaths, trembling slightly and bowed over the faucet.

It was horrible. _He_ was horrible. Seamus felt disgusting. Did he –? God, did he really –?

Closing his eyes, he bowed his head. Seamus couldn't look in the mirror; he didn't want to see the person who looked back at him. He felt utterly repulsed by himself. It felt like a betrayal, of Dean, of their friendship, of his mam and his family, though what they really had to do with anything Seamus didn't know. He only knew that if he told any of them, if he admitted any of this to them, they would be horrified.

Seamus felt like he was going to heave, the contents of his dinner roiling in his gut. His hands felt clammy, his knees shook and it was likely only his hold upon the ceramic edge of the faucet that kept him standing.

Horrible. Disgusting.

Seamus' legs didn't last long. In short order he found himself sinking to the ground and it was only with half a mind that he managed to drag himself towards the nearest wall. It was pathetic to be so suddenly jelly-legged and debilitated, but Seamus couldn't help himself. And really, so long as Dean wasn't around to see, he didn't care. He didn't even want to think about why it was suddenly so important that Dean didn't see him.

Seamus wasn't sure how long he sat there. After a time he curled his knees to his chest and dropped his forehead onto them. Squeezing his eyes closed, he clocked out the wan light that reflected off the bathroom tiles. Regardless of how long he sat, it didn't seem to make a difference. He still felt disgusting.

After some indeterminate time, however, the door to the bathroom opened. It swung fully open nearly silently before Seamus had even managed to open his eyes. He did at the sound of squeaky hinges, just to make sure that it wasn't Dean. Just to give himself a moment of preparation if it was.

It wasn't Dean. For some stupid reason, even through his relief, Seamus was just a little saddened by that. For some stupid, _stupid_ reason.

It was Wayne. His friend Wayne, the boy who had become his sort-of friend gradually over the year or so and who Seamus still didn't really know all that well. He looked slightly out of breath, which Seamus detachedly wondered at, but it wasn't until his gaze fastened on Seamus that he really seemed to sag with some kind of weariness.

Without a word, Wayne slipped through the door, crossed the room and slowly lowered himself to the ground beside Seamus. He didn't speak for a long moment, either, and Seamus wasn't sure whether that made things better or worse. Seamus struggled to look at him, to glance even vaguely in his direction. He'd only just managed to when Wayne spoke.

"Seamus, what happened? Are you alright?"

Wayne was almost always softly spoken. Soft-spoken and kind, and gentle, and as innately Hufflepuff as Hannah that it really was a little unfortunate that he didn't fancy her because they would have made the perfect house couple. He was a few inches taller than Seamus as just about every boy in their year but Harry was, but for some reason seemed smaller for his quietly unobtrusive manner.

He was distinctly calming, though, and despite the queasiness that still touched Seamus' stomach, the discomfort that made his want to writhe in his own skin, Seamus did actually feel soothed. Soothed and, strangely enough, like he wanted to answer Wayne's question. Wayne had that effect on people. Seamus had never been on the receiving end of such before but he knew that Wayne wielded a certain type of natural magic in that regard. He made people want to act as he asked them to just because.

"I…" Seamus' voice was a croak, wavering slightly, and it was a struggle to get even that feeble word out. He swallowed as he closed his eyes once more, raising a clenched fist to butt against his forehead as though he might actually be able to knock some sense into himself. It didn't work, unless he considered the abrupt need to spill forth his problem 'sense'.

Because he did. Suddenly, Seamus wanted to tell someone. He hated keeping his thoughts and feelings a secret, hated being alone in something that, he would admit to himself at least, terrified the hell out of him. The words spilled forth a moment later. "Wayne, I think I might be gay."

Silence met his words. Silence but for their echo, though Seamus wasn't sure if they resounded so because they ricocheting off the bathroom tiles or because they simply rung so deafeningly in his ears. He couldn't open his eyes, not to look at Wayne, not to behold the world that he felt suddenly _knew_. Instead, he only thumped at his head with his fist and attempted to grasp onto some sort of composure. He didn't think it worked but he didn't stop trying to reach for it.

Not until he felt a hand on his shoulder, however, which drew his gaze towards the boy sitting next to him. Seamus almost didn't want to behold his expression, fearing what he might see. Sure, Wayne might be gay too, but what of it? He might still think Seamus was disgusting for being such a way, mightn't he? What if he did? What if he'd now found out and would tell everyone? What if _everyone_ found out?

Seamus was stupid for thinking that way. He was stupid and, in the moment he met Wayne's gaze, their softness, the gentle and slightly sad little smile upon his lips, he knew that Wayne would never hate him for that. He'd probably never hate anyone for being gay. Not even himself.

Still, even with that suspicion, Seamus felt his breath knocked out of him by the words he spoke a moment later. "Yeah, I know, Seamus. I know. And that's really, really alright."

It was… it really was astounding. Truly. Seamus didn't really understand _how_ Wayne knew, or how he could so easily accept it of Seamus, but he couldn't make his thoughts restart from their sluggish crawl to work it out. A second later, however, even that attempt was thrust to the side, because Wayne, kind, gentle, calming Wayne, leaned forwards and oh-so-softly pressed his lips against Seamus'.

Seamus couldn't really think about anything after that.


	6. Chapter 6 - Fourth Year - Part III

A/N: Again, another WARNING. Much internalised - and thence externalised - homophobia in this chapter. I'm sorry, people. This is pure angst right here.

In addition to this, I sincerely apologise for the lack of Dean x Seamus. It will come, I swear. It's gradual, but it will definitely happen post this chapter. I promise.

* * *

 **Chapter 6: Fourth Year - Part III**

Seamus managed to make it out of the common room alone the next morning. It was ridiculously early, and not only because at his usual seven o'clock wake up everyone else would likely still be thickly embedded in sleeping the previous night's festivities off. Seamus hadn't slept at all so he didn't really have any difficulty with waking.

The common room was empty but for the fire crackling in the hearth. There was little to suggest that the Yule Ball had taken place the night before, which was only to be expected. Seamus supposed that even had any of his housemates returned to the Tower to drink or discard articles of clothing, the house elves would have swept through after them. He left the warmth of the common room for the cool corridors beyond and headed for the Great Hall.

Seamus wasn't hungry. He wasn't really anything but exhausted and gut-wrenchingly nauseous. But even so, it was better to pretend to fall back into the routine he followed even in the holidays than to let himself think. Seamus really, really didn't want to think.

The Great Hall was empty too. Empty of students and any evidence the Yule Ball had taken place at all. The icy dance floor had vanished, the round tables and overlarge head table returned to the normal four parallel lines and perpendicular companion. The giant Christmas trees had been rearranged back to their usual positions and the décor of tinsel and baubles, Christmas pixies and twinkling stars, were similarly replaced. Overhead, the typical, thin flutter of winter snowflakes fell silently and peacefully.

Seating himself to the Gryffindor table, Seamus was almost surprised to see the empty plates before him erupt into piles of toast, eggs and sausages, jugs of milk and juice springing as if straight from the table top. Or at least he was detachedly surprised; not much could draw him from his thoughts at that moment.

For Seamus _was_ thinking. He'd never been particularly good at that, so maybe that was why he was having such a hard time of it. His mind seemed to be wandering in the same, weary tracks that wouldn't solve themselves and yet wouldn't stop repeating its steps.

Firstly, Seamus had been struck by a realisation. A horrible realisation that had resulted in him avoiding the common room until the wee hours of the morning to similarly avoid his housemates. Or one house mate in particular, that was. Seamus didn't know how he could face Dean, not after what he'd realised the night before. That he liked Dean. That he fancied him like a boy liked a girl, and that no matter how he tried to thrust the thought aside, when it had struck him and the truth of that realisation made itself know, Seamus couldn't think anything other. He _knew_. He _knew_ it was true.

Seamus hated himself for it. It was one thing to think himself gay, but quite another to have that abnormality cast starkly into the light. He wasn't supposed to like people like that.

Secondly, the Hufflepuffs knew. Or at least Hannah and Wayne did. Seamus' closely guarded secret had come out, and that revelation made it seem only more real, only more impossible to change. Seamus didn't even know if he could change it, no matter how much he wanted to because _God_ , what would his mam think? What would his uncails and aintíns think, his grandad and grandmam? His cousins – dammit, definitely Fergus – would give him hell if they didn't turn from him entirely. Seamus was scared, and even suspecting that Eoghan and possibly his dad might not hold quite the same disgust for him…

Seamus wasn't just scared. He was terrified.

And thirdly… thirdly was what had happened after. What had followed straight after Wayne had found him in the bathroom and folded himself down to the floor at Seamus' side. He'd told Seamus he'd known and then… then he'd kissed him.

Wayne. Wayne had kissed him.

He'd –

Wayne had _kissed_ him.

Seamus didn't know what to make of that. That was the most confusing of the thoughts that ran rampart through his mind, even if it wasn't the most painful. Thinking about Dean hurt and elicited from him a terrible feeling of guilt. Thought of his family was terrifying and as Seamus' mind brushed past the image of his mam's scolding face once more he felt a slight tremble take a hold of his fingers. But Wayne… when Seamus thought about Wayne it wasn't with fear. It wasn't with guilt, either, and surprisingly, perhaps most surprisingly, it wasn't with disgust.

Wayne had kissed Seamus and it hadn't been horrible. It hadn't been disgusting and Seamus hadn't felt the immediate need to fling himself from him. Maybe it was simply because he'd been so shocked that he hadn't had the presence of mind to withdraw, but that was the truth of it. It was only as Wayne didn't pull away, as he raised a hand and gently, just slightly, touched a hand to the side of Seamus' head, that Seamus was struck by an unexpected and entirely unprecedented realisation.

Wayne was kissing him and it wasn't bad. It wasn't bad in the slightest. Through Seamus' abrupt horror at his feelings for Dean, through all of the emotions that welled as a result, it definitely wasn't bad. Wayne's lips were warm, gentle just as Wayne always was, and the tickling touch of his breath as he finally drew away from Seamus' own lips wasn't aversive in the slightest. When Seamus met Wayne's eyes, when Wayne drew away from him just slightly yet didn't release the gentle touch of his hand to the side of Seamus' head, there was such kindness in his eyes that it was overwhelming.

He didn't known what to say. Seamus didn't know what to say or if he could have said anything at all even had he known. Thankfully, Wayne didn't seem to need him to, and he said just that. "Don't worry, Seamus. You don't need to say anything. I just wanted you to know, that's all." Then he finally dropped his hand from Seamus' face and settled himself more comfortably at his side.

And waited.

They didn't speak for the rest of the night, not even when Seamus finally plucked up the courage to stand. His tongue, for once, appeared to have been lost somewhere down the back of his throat, and though Seamus couldn't quite bring himself to look at Wayne – Wayne, who'd kissed him, who was warm and sat next to him on the cold bathroom floor and hadn't seemed to care that he was gay – he didn't seem able to draw his attention from him either.

When Seamus finally worked up the energy and the practicality to leave the bathroom, Wayne left alongside him. He still didn't speak, didn't demanded that Seamus do so either, but simply offered him a smile as Seamus glanced at him sidelong. Then another when Seamus paused at a junction in the following corridor that he knew was a split in directions between the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff common rooms. Seamus turned towards him, eyeing him warily. He'd stopped shaking a little while ago, even if the sickly feeling in his belly hadn't abated.

Wayne turned to him at the same time. "Are you alright to head back to your common room by yourself?"

Seamus blinked at him. What was he, an invalid? He wasn't injured, or unwell, or in need of the emotional support. Or he didn't think he was, anyway, though Wayne's gentle words suggested he would offer him a hand of help should he need it. But then… for some reason it wasn't as annoying as Seamus considered Wayne's unspoken suggestion should have been. A little disgruntling maybe, but not quite annoying.

Nodding his head, because Seamus' tongue was still a dead weight in his mouth, he could only swallow before turning down the right-hand corridor and making for Gryffindor Tower. He couldn't bring himself to glance towards Wayne even when the tension thrumming through him sorely demanded he do just that.

Seamus hadn't known what to do. He still didn't know what to say when he saw Wayne next, and not because he was terrified of facing someone who _knew_. He didn't know what he would say to the boy who had so readily and gently kissed him as though he actually fancied him. He didn't know what he was expected to say or even how he felt about it. Kissing a boy was wrong, Seamus knew. He knew it on an innate level, and yet… kissing Wayne hadn't felt bad. Last night he'd been terrified and horrified and writhing in self-disgust, and yet that brief touch of lips on warm lips had shattered the battering and wailing inside Seamus' head, if briefly.

It should have felt bad to do what he'd done, to let it happen. So why did it feel anything but? It felt… it had felt _good_.

Seamus didn't know. He didn't know anything – what to say to Wayne, how he should face Dean, what he would do when his family found out because it was inevitable that they eventually would. As he sat alone in the Great Hall at Gryffindor table before dawn had even fully begun to bathe the school in light, the thoughts buzzed in endless loops around his mind.

What to do?

What to do?

 _What to do?_

Seamus didn't realise he was chewing his fingernails until he tore one painfully short. He didn't realised he hadn't partaken of any breakfast until that moment too, when his attention was momentarily shaken and his gaze dropped to the clean, empty plate before him. Not that he felt like eating anyway. Seamus thought that if he swallowed anything it would most likely come back up again.

That was how Wayne found him, introspective once more and systematically chewing his way through his fingernails. The hall was still empty, and maybe it was only for that reason that Wayne deemed it acceptable, allowable, take a seat at Seamus' side. Which he did. Seamus didn't even realise he'd stepped into the room until the light scrape of the bench at his side drew his attention towards him.

Wayne's curly hair had turned into the messy scramble that it always was. Not messy like Seamus', because Seamus knew from experience that under his mam's hard hand it could indeed be tamed, but simply naturally haphazard. His kind eyes settled upon Seamus as Seamus turned towards him, and he didn't demand. He didn't speak at all, even, but instead set about silently and deliberately filling his plate with breakfast.

Seamus found himself staring at every movement as his mind whirred and sharpened upon the thoughts that unshakeably nagged at him. Or to one thought in particular, really. Maybe it was because Wayne's kiss had made him hyperaware of him, but he couldn't help but study his every gesture, the way he shifted in his seat, the momentary glance and small hint of a smile Wayne spared him when he noticed Seamus staring. Seamus had never really looked at Wayne particularly closely, but he did in that moment. Even as a very loud and very demanding voice in the back of his mind scolded him for it, told him every angle of why to think in such a way was wrong, Seamus looked.

Wayne was quiet and unobtrusive, and that was probably the main reason no one particularly considered him. He wasn't overtly good-looking, but there was a distinctive gentleness to his features, softness around his mouth and his eyes, the hold of his eyebrows that were just a little thick. His nose was a little long, but it looked appropriate as it was, seemed to match his long fingers, his long limbs all over. Wayne wasn't as tall as Dean, but he had the same sort of lankiness to him.

Seamus had never noticed before. Before that year, Seamus hadn't really noticed anyone before, and so far in his fourth year he studiously forbidden himself to.

Turning with a sharp snap of his head, Seamus dropped his gaze down to his plate. He shouldn't stare. He wasn't supposed to. Thinking thoughts like that were unnatural, and if his family knew… if Seamus' mam found out he thought like that she'd be horrified. What would she do? Would she disown him? Would she kick him out of the house in the summer break? Would Seamus' dad agree with, and would he dare to stop if he even wanted to?

Seamus loved his mam terribly, in that moment she scared him. When he glanced at Wayne, it felt like he was doing something wrong, like he was inciting her wrath even from afar. Seamus wasn't a stickler for the rules, and though he wasn't quite as disregarding of them as Harry and Ron were, it wasn't like he was a perfect student. He didn't mind getting in trouble all that much, but for this, in this instance –

"Are you alright?"

At Wayne's words, Seamus felt his gaze snapped him. Seamus wasn't good with withdrawing from his surroundings – or at least he wasn't usually. He'd very much lost himself in thought in the last however long he'd been in the Great Hall, but it was next to impossible to ignore Wayne at his side, even had he not been already playing on his thoughts. Seamus was a watcher and a doer. He'd never been one to simply sit silently without becoming involved.

So when Wayne spoke, his voice quiet and as gentle as ever, Seamus couldn't help but glance towards him and open his mouth to reply. Words dried on his tongue, however, and the best he could do was nod.

Wayne seemed to understand. Taking a bite of toast, he deliberately put the slice back down and dusted his fingers before turning more fully towards Seamus. There was a distinctly mature cast to his expression that left Seamus abruptly baffled. He didn't know how to handle the situation, but it was apparent that Wayne had some thoughts about how he was going to go about it.

Which he did. He didn't wait for Seamus to speak before continuing. "Sorry. That was a stupid question. I know you're not alright. I was just hoping you were feeling a little bit better than last night so we could maybe talk about it. I think…" Wayne paused, raising a finger to the bottom of his chin and poking it in an oddly deliberate gesture. He did that, Seamus abruptly realised. A lot of his actions were strangely slow, measured and deliberate. "I think maybe we should talk about it?"

Seamus' first instinct was defensiveness. To rebuff Wayne's words, because why should he talk about it? More than that, why should he talk about it with Wayne? But even as Seamus felt his shoulders tense, at the same moment his indignation and defensive anger died. It was impossible to keep the flame alit in the face of Wayne's openness. He was just… it was just impossible. He had very dark eyes. Gentle. Imploring, even. No wonder people liked Wayne and did what he asked them to. He had the sort of expression that was next to impossible to deny.

Turning his attention back towards his plate – his empty plate – Seamus shrugged. "I don't think, like – I don't think we have to talk about it." It was perhaps a little cruel of Seamus given that at least part of what was cluttering his head had to do with Wayne, but even so. He didn't feel like he was ready to confront any of it.

"If it's all the same to you, I'd like to," Wayne said. He shifted slightly in his seat, picked up his toast and took another bite before deliberately placing it back down again. "I mean, so long as it doesn't worry you too much. Considering – considering I'd like to talk about what happened last night from my perspective too. And it might be a little selfish of me, but I'd really, really like to talk to you, Seamus."

Seamus couldn't help but glance up towards Wayne once more at that. It was perhaps the most he'd ever heard him speak in one bout. Wayne wasn't much of a talker, and between Susan and Hannah he didn't need to be. "Your very talkative all of a sudden."

He hadn't mean it as a criticism, but to Seamus' ears his words sounded as much. Wayne apparently didn't think so, however, for he offered Seamus a smile before replying. "I'm not, actually. Or more, it's not like I don't talk all that much. It's just that sometimes I don't need to."

"Sometimes?"

"Maybe a lot of the time," Wayne said with a quiet laugh. "Susan tends to be a little hard to interrupt sometimes."

Seamus nodded his agreement. Susan especially was something of a talker, and considering Wayne was the considerate type that lacked an aggressive bone in his body, Seamus didn't think he'd be the sort of person to interrupt when Susan was ranting through a spiel. An intelligent and likely relatable spiel, but persistent nonetheless. Susan was like that, Seamus had grown to realise.

"You don't say," Seamus muttered, glancing once more to his plate. He wished he'd had the energy to serve himself breakfast, even if only to act as a distraction. Even if he didn't think he'd be able to stomach anything anyway.

"Do you mind?" Wayne asked.

"Mind what?"

"If we talk. About it. Or," from the corner of his eye, Seamus saw Wayne shrug, "I can do the talking if you'd like. You can just listen and speak up when you feel like it."

Seamus shrugged by way of reply. He didn't want to speak but it really was a little hard to say no to Wayne. Wayne apparently took his gesture for an affirmative for he continued after another bite of toast. It was ridiculously casual gesture and only served to baffle Seamus further. Casual was not something he was feeling in the slightest at that moment. That Wayne could seem as such was a little disconcerting.

"Alright. So, I wanted to, um," Wayne poked at his chin when Seamus spared him a glance. A poke followed by a smile before he continued. "I guess I wanted to maybe apologise a little bit? For up and kissing you last night?"

Slowly, Seamus turned his head towards him. The tension was only growing in his shoulders, but for a different reason this time. Wayne had kissed him, and though it had been wrong it had also felt kind of incredible. Seamus had never kissed anyone before, and though he'd felt nothing if not out of his depth and unhinged by what had happened earlier in the night it had been… it had been…

 _Nice. Though it's not supposed to be nice,_ he thought. Seamus felt shoulders tightened further. Swallowing, he struggled to meet Wayne's open gaze. It was hard; Wayne had just apologised, so that meant he knew it was wrong too, didn't it? "You don't have to apologise or anything, like," he mumbled, and horribly he heard his voice waver. He hadn't realised he was that upset but at the sound of it he felt a tightening in his throat that wasn't abated by another swallow. "I know you're – I know you're gay too. I mean, like, Hannah – Hannah told me before when she –" Glancing sharply up at Wayne, he cringed. "Sorry. I – don't tell Hannah I told you. Don't – I mean, she didn't say it to be mean or anything, like, just because we were talking and –"

"Seamus," Wayne interrupted, and Seamus was so startled that _Wayne_ had interrupted him – Wayne, who never interrupted anyone – that his tongue was stilled. Wayne was still smiling, yet not in an annoyed or exasperated fashion. "I don't mind. Really, I don't mind that Hannah told you. I told her ages ago, and I'm not exactly secretive about it. Most people just – I don't know, they don't ask?"

Seamus blinked, suddenly awkward. "Oh," was all he could manage. He didn't know what else to say in the slightest, couldn't imagine that kind of openness. Wayne didn't care? That was impossible. How could he not care?

Somehow, Wayne seemed to hear his thoughts. His smile widened slightly, softly. "I don't care what people think about who I like. It doesn't matter to me who knows, because what does it matter? Why should it matter if I like boys more than girls? Or at least in that way." His smile became faintly self-deprecating but not necessarily critical. He shrugged. "I don't really mind."

Seamus stared and blinked silently. He couldn't fathom that way of thinking. It was so strange, so impossible, and yet Wayne seemed entirely sincere in his stance. As though he truly didn't have a problem with it. As though… as though he really didn't care who knew because he _didn't have a problem with it._

It jarred Seamus slightly and he couldn't think to speak. He couldn't draw his gaze away from Wayne either. For him, with the roiling, gut-wrenching and sickening knowledge of what he was, what he liked, and what his family and everyone else would surely think of him, it was unimaginable. Seamus knew it was _wrong_ , that how he thought was _wrong_ , and though he couldn't think Wayne was bad he surely had to be unnatural. Acknowledging that it happened, that some boys liked boys and some girls liked girls, was one thing, but to accept it? To be okay with it? To think it was _allowed_?

An unexpected shudder raked fingernails down Seamus' spine. Squeezing his eyes closed briefly, he shook his head. "That's so – it's so –"

"Weird?" Wayne supplied, and Seamus opened his eyes to glance at him once more. "Different? Unexpected and stupid and unnatural?"

Seamus fought not to flinch at each word, because they struck truthful even when Wayne spoke them in such a mild tone. Truthful and cruel, though Seamus had told himself just those words so many times. And worse. So much worse because –

"It's not, you know."

"What?"

Wayne shook his head. "There's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with being a boy and liking other boys."

Seamus nodded hesitantly. "I – I know that."

Wayne gave a small smile. "But you don't really believe it. Especially not for you."

Before he could stop himself, Seamus found he'd tucked his chin and hunched further upon himself. His thumbnail found its way into his mouth once more but he barely noticed as he set to chewing it. "Wayne, I don't, like – I don't think there's anything wrong with you."

"There is with you, though?" Wayne asked.

"There's nothing wrong with you," Seamus repeated, and to his ears he sounded like he was trying to convince himself of that fact. "You're allowed to like b-blokes. There's nothing wrong with that."

Wayne fell silent for such a long moment that Seamus couldn't sit through it without glancing in his direction. He was smiling again in a way that on anyone else would have probably seemed eerie for its persistence but on Wayne just looked gentle. And nice. Wayne was a nice person. "But not for you?"

Seamus twitched once more. When he said it like that it sounded stupid. When Wayne highlighted the double standards it really _was_ stupid, even if Seamus felt that way. He couldn't think someone like Wayne was bad, but for him – for Seamus he knew it was wrong that he liked boys. It was just that for him, for his circumstances, it shouldn't happen. He wasn't supposed to be gay. No purebloods were allowed to be and his family would be horrified. That sort of thing… it just didn't happen. What would everyone else say? What would Seamus' mam say? And Dean? What would Dean think? For reasons Seamus didn't want to peer at too closely, that concern was particularly pronounced.

"It sounds stupid when you say it like that," Seamus mumbled, because he couldn't think of it any other way.

Wayne shook his head and even though Seamus had dropped his eyes once more he could feel his continued smile. His gentle smile. "I don't mean to sound like I'm insulting you, because I'm not. It's just… you're allowed to as well, Seamus."

Seamus shook his head, though less in denial than because he didn't know what else to say. Wayne seemed to realise that. "You don't think it's okay, right? Is it – I mean, I don't want to sound like I'm accusing them or anything, but would your family be angry, do you think?"

Seamus snapped his attention towards Wayne and his expression must have spoken for him because Wayne only nodded, his smile growing sympathetic. Somehow he managed it without appearing patronising. "That must be really hard, to have your family against you."

"I don't –" Seamus began, and had to pause to dismiss the returned waver to his voice. "You don't know that. I haven't – I mean, I haven't told them, like. I haven't told any of them." He didn't think it counted that Eoghan had guessed. He hadn't said anything explicitly.

Wayne nodded knowingly. "You just don't think they would?" Before Seamus could reply he continued, and Seamus could only marvel once more that this was _Wayne Hopkins_ , the quiet one who barely spoke yet was now speaking enough for a small party of people. "I can see that. I'm not saying I think your family are bad or anything, Seamus, but you're a pureblood, aren't you? Or at least part of your family is?"

Seamus gave a small nod. Had anyone else said as much to him he would have likely snapped their head off, but… this was Wayne. Wayne wouldn't hurt a fly and just as likely a fly wouldn't find itself capable of hurting him either. "Me mam's pureblood. Me mam's whole family is. But me dad – he's a Muggle so they're not, like, they're not prejudiced. None of them. They're _not_." Seamus hated that it sounded as though he was trying to convince someone, and he wasn't sure if it was Wayne or himself. His family weren't bad. They really weren't. They just wouldn't like it if they found out he was…

Wayne was nodding again. "Yeah, I get it. It's fine, Seamus. It's not just a pureblood thing either, you know. A lot of Muggles have a problem with homophobia too."

At that word, that one word that sounded so clinical yet practical, Seamus couldn't help but flinch once more. His shoulders hunched just a little further. "I know. Me dad – me second cousin on me dad's side is… he's..." He trailed off suggestively.

"Your family has a problem with him?"

Seamus snorted. "Yeah, you could say that." He didn't like talking about this, but Wayne was a very difficult person to deflect. "But not you?"

"Not me what?"

"Not your family, like. They – they know and they're –"

"They know," Wayne said with a nod. "They know and they don't care either way. It would be a little hypocritical of them if they did, actually." He smiled at Seamus' confusion. "My mum broke up with my dad when I was just a kid. She never remarried but she's been living with my other mum since before I can remember."

Seamus blinked, surprised. "You have two mums?"

"Well, not genetically, but in every other way yeah. I've never met my dad."

"You have two mums?"

"Yeah."

"So they're, like –?"

"You look a little bit like a goldfish," Wayne said, and his smile widened until it crinkled his eyes. Still soft, still gentle, but merry this time. "It's not as strange as it sounds, you know. And it's fine. It's great, actually. I love both my mums."

Seamus slowly shook his head. He didn't mean to think about it so bluntly, but the voice in the back of his mind that murmured, _Well, I guess that explains it_ was almost cruel. Cruel and yet persistent as it continued, because maybe that was why Wayne thought it was okay? That it wasn't wrong – which it wasn't, Seamus had to remind himself, denying the larger part of himself that demanded he except its standards. There was nothing wrong with Wayne, so there couldn't be anything wrong with his preferences. It just it sat so crookedly. How could someone who was so nice be something that he knew was so unnatural?

Seamus thought he could feel a headache coming on. That and the rising confusion of thoughts made him feel nauseous once more. Seamus felt torn in half between what _should_ be, what he'd always known and what he knew was expected of him, and what his coinciding and tentatively rationalising thoughts suggested. It hurt. It was confusing and burned him achingly deep in his chest.

"Hey, are you okay?"

Seamus didn't realise he'd tucked his chin, that he was butting his fist against his forehead in an attempt to relieve the spawning confusion of thoughts within his skull, until Wayne tapped him gently on his shoulder. With a struggle, Seamus managed to drop his fist and glance his way once more. "That's really cool, that you've got two mums and all, like. And that they're fine with you being g-gay."

"You look like you're going to throw up," Wayne said, his tone equal parts concerned and wary. He didn't lift his hand of Seamus' shoulder, however.

"I kind of feel like it, actually."

"Would you like to go to the Hospital Wing?"

Seamus shook his head. "No. No, it's not that kind of bad."

Nodding as though he'd expected it, almost as though he'd experienced such a response before himself, Wayne gently patted Seamus' shoulder. "I get it. I think to a lot of people it would be a little hard to swallow. And, you know, realising you were gay if you weren't comfortable with it."

"I just can't imagine being so okay with it," Seamus murmured, almost surprised that he spoke with such openness. He unconsciously raised his fist to his forehead once more, only to realise what he was doing at the last second and change the gesture to raking his fingers through his hair before dropping his forehead into his palm. "I can't imagine me mam and everyone being okay with it ever, like."

"Maybe they'll have to be?" Wayne said. He sounded as hopeful as he was sympathetic. "They love you, I'm sure. Maybe they will be?"

"It doesn't ever go away, does it?" Seamus sighed.

"What?"

"Being gay."

Wayne uttered a sad little laugh. "No, I don't think it works like that. But there's nothing wrong with that either, Seamus. I like how I am. I think it's great that you are, too."

"The more the merrier, right?" Seamus said, though he felt just a more nauseous for thinking it. _Wrong_. _It feels wrong and Merlin, mam will kill me when she finds out. If –_ if _she finds out. Maybe I actually could try to keep it a secret from her? From everyone? Maybe…_

Wayne laughed again, interrupting Seamus' feverish thoughts. "Yeah, I guess. Though I meant it more because I like you, and I think it's probably a lot better if the boy I fancy likes boys too."

The words took a moment to filter through Seamus' muttering thoughts. When they did, he lifted his head abruptly from his palm. That didn't make sense. "What?"

"I fancy you, Seamus," Wayne said with a little shrug.

That didn't make sense at all. Didn't Wayne just -? Before, hadn't he just apologise for -? "What?"

Wayne's smile grew a little amused. "You don't think I'd just kiss anyone, do you? I've liked you for ages, actually. Since second year, I think it was. I just never had the guts to come out and say it till now. Not till I knew. Sorry that I kissed you when you were kind of upset, but – I mean, I'm not sorry that I _kissed_ you, exactly."

Seamus blinked slowly, then again in rapid succession. "What?"

"Is that the only word you can say?" Wayne was definitely amused now, though he looked a little apologetic for his amusement. "You always talk a lot so I thought you had a bit more of a vocabulary than that. No, wait, I _know_ you do."

"You sound like Susan," Seamus said detachedly, which was true, even if Wayne would never be able to attain the degree of condescension that Susan could manage at times.

"She does rub off on you after a while," Wayne said with a nod. "In a good way, though."

Of course Wayne would say it was 'in a good way'. He saw the good in everyone, _was_ good, and that was what made it so hard. It was easier to simply acknowledge people were gay without confronting them, because when people like him, like Seamus, spread it all out on the table it provoked repulsion in him that he couldn't contain. It was only made more confusing by the fact that, repulsive though it was, Wayne _was_ good. He was kind, gentle, friendly and _good_. Seamus had always heard the mutters of his uncail's and aintíns, of his grandparents and even of his mam about how 'unnatural' homosexuality was, about how people would have to be a more than little bit touched in the head and it was a shame because it apparently couldn't be fixed quite so easily as with a wave of a wand.

Seamus knew his family weren't bad people, but he also knew Wayne wasn't. Somehow, those two facts didn't seem able to coexist. It was thoroughly confusing. Distressing. That burn in Seamus' chest started up again.

And on top of that, Wayne fancied him? Seamus couldn't wrap his head around it. For all he'd replayed the kiss from the night before in his head over and over again, trying to reconcile whether it felt as bad as it should have and rapidly reaching the conclusion that it didn't _at all,_ he'd never considered that. He'd simply never gotten to the stage where he thought about really liking someone and taking that step towards dating.

It was uncharted territory. Untouchable. Impossible.

Squeezing his eyes closed, for a headache truly did feel on the verge of erupting, Seamus shook his head as if to rid his ears of water. "Wait, so, like – so you fancy me?"

Wayne was watching him expectantly when he opened his eyes. The moment he realised Seamus was watching him in return his smile spread once more and he nodded. "Sorry if that bothers you. I just wanted you to know."

Did it bother him? Seamus didn't know. Everything had been abruptly tilted on its axis by that admission and the buzz of thoughts in Seamus' head was made only louder for the extra layer of confusion. _Did_ it bother him? He liked Wayne, thought him a top bloke, but fancy him? Other than Dean –

Other than Dean, Seamus hadn't ever liked anyone. Or he hadn't let himself, anyway. He'd never thought about what to do if it happened the other way around.

"I don't know what to do," Seamus found himself saying.

Wayne blinked expectantly, as though awaiting for further explanation. When Seamus provided none, his brow crinkled slightly. "About what?"

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that," Seamus said. He couldn't look at Wayne anymore. It was suddenly embarrassing, and another feeling, a strange feeling, had unexpectedly taken up residence within him. Seamus didn't know what it was but it felt vastly different to the wrongness that still nagged at him. So different as to be completely opposite, even. "I don't know what to do about you fancying me, like."

Unexpectedly, because Seamus had almost expected Wayne to crumple at his words, he was instead offered a beaming smile that crinkled the corners of Wayne's eyes once more. "That's okay. You don't have to do anything with it. I just wanted to let you know."

"But, like, I can't just leave it –"

"Then think about it," Wayne said, shrugging. "Think about it a little bit and if it bothers you, talk to me." As Seamus blinked at his plate, Wayne shifted slightly in his seat once more. "Look, I don't exactly expect anything. Sure, I'd like to date you and all, but I can handle you not wanting to. I know you're probably just coming to terms with everything and I know that's hard –"

"You know, do you?" Seamus asked, and couldn't quite keep the bite from his words. Wayne knew? Wayne had two mums who were both accepting of his preferences and didn't care about what Seamus had always been told to consider 'unnatural'. How could he know?

But Wayne only nodded. "Believe it or not, it still hit me as kind of strange. Even after seeing my mums together, I never really expected to be with anyone but a girl when I was little. I sort of considered myself with someone like one of my mum's one day."

"That's a little weird," Seamus muttered.

Wayne laughed. It was so casual, so easy, that it seemed to batter at Seamus' melancholic confusion, driving away the darkness like a light shined into shadow. "Yeah, probably. It's not going to happen, though, I expect."

Seamus could only shake his head. He didn't know what to do with what Wayne had told him, with his own situation – about Dean, about his family, about himself – and it didn't seem likely to sort itself out. Suddenly, Seamus felt exhausted. He just wanted it to be gone, to be out of the way. Hell, he'd even take nothing over the mess he'd found himself in.

"It's not bad, Seamus," Wayne said quietly, as though in deference to Seamus' silent pensiveness. Although, Seamus had never really seen himself as pensive. He was just… confused. "It's not bad, so just try and think about it. And if you need someone to talk to, I'm here for that too."

Seamus managed to spare Wayne a sidelong glance to see him perform his deliberate breakfasting act before dusting off his fingers again. It was weird. It was so weird, and Seamus couldn't help but glance at his fingers. Weird but not in a bad way. Just different. Seamus had never seen anyone eat like that before.

Before he could say anything, however, before he could reply with thanks or denial, the opportunity for privacy was stolen from them. Stolen not violently or even offhandedly but by the hasty intrusion of a fellow student.

Dean. Impossibly, ridiculously, it was Dean who swung around the door to skid to a stop in the entrance to the Great Hall. The rest of the hall was empty but for Seamus and Wayne, and it was Dean who arrived next. The coincidence itself would have been far-fetched to consider, except that before Seamus could even finish the thought, Dean disregarded its validity with a relieved sigh. "Oh, thank God, there you are. I had no idea where you'd gotten off to." Starting down the hall at a brisk step, Dean adopted a smile that was somewhere between that ensuing relief and persisting concern. He barely nodded at Wayne in greeting before dropping onto the bench at Seamus' other side.

Seamus felt abruptly like a criminal. Like a thief that had been caught in the middle of a heinous act, _Lumos_ trained upon him to bare him starkly in the middle of his crime, and he couldn't move but to follow Dean with his eyes. At his side he could hear Wayne take another bite of toast but didn't spare a glance his way.

Dean seated himself sideways on the bench, studying Seamus with that persisting, relieved concern. The slight frown on his forehead suggested his study was far from satisfying. "Are you alright?" He asked, and that concern thickly laced his words. "I looked for you last night but didn't know where you'd gone. What happened?"

Seamus could hardly breathe for the tension thrumming through him. He felt as though Dean knew. As though Dean knew everything – not just the fact that Seamus was gay but that he liked _Dean_. Any second now, Dean would snap out of the guise of a friendly, concerned friend and adopt a visage of disgust, perhaps ridicule. He'd spear Seamus with a glare and hate him for thinking as he did, and that very thought froze Seamus' heart in his chest.

Dean was his best friend. His _best friend._ He couldn't lose him, not for anything. Not for –

"Seamus just wasn't feeling very well," Wayne said over Seamus' shoulder. Dean glanced towards him and that shift of attention, that retraining of his gaze, was enough for Seamus to spare a similar, rigid glance along his line of sight. Wayne was smiling warmly, not at Dean but at Seamus. His quiet voice was comforting, and it was likely that no one would pick he was lying. Seamus was half convinced he was sick himself for Wayne's words. "It's okay, though. I just bumped into him and we made sure no one was going to throw up or anything."

"Oh," Dean huffed, and Seamus snapped his attention back towards him. He still struggled to breathe and hoped the effort wasn't as pronounced as it felt. But Dean seemed abruptly eased for Wayne's words. Though he still wore a concerned frown, it lessened somewhat when he nudged Seamus with an elbow. "Why didn't you just tell me instead of taking off like that last night? I could have walked with you to Pomfrey's or whatever."

Seamus could only shrug. He could only sit and shrug throughtout the entirety of the ensuing breakfast as slowly, incrementally, the hall began to fill with students. Dean seemed to relax at his side even if Seamus found it next to impossible to do more than nod when he asked if he was "Sure you're alright?" and told that "If you have something small for breakfast it might actually make you feel better".

It wouldn't. Seamus knew it wouldn't, and not only because he felt terrible. There was a different kind of pain that accompanied his confusion, and Seamus had never confronted before. It was a pain that was a little angry, a little frustrated, very baffled and incredibly out of its depth.

When Wayne rose from his seat beside him, dusting off his hands one final time to the suggestion that he seek his own table since they didn't have the hall to themselves anymore, Seamus drew his gaze towards him. He met Wayne stare for stare, that soft, kindly gaze that offered only support as sincerely as his gentle touch on the shoulder did. And when he left, Seamus watched him the whole way across the hall until he seated himself alongside Hannah and was immediately drawn into conversation.

"He's a nice guy, isn't he?" Dean said.

Seamus nodded slowly, unable in that moment to shake his attention from Wayne. "Yeah, he really is," he found himself saying. Which was true. It was very true.

Unfortunately, that truth only added to his confusion of the situation. Seamus abruptly decided that out of all of his years at Hogwarts so far, this was by far the worst. How the hell did anyone even think through such madness? And more than that, more than the guilt and persisting pain, was the overload of information and considerations and suggestions, half of which had arisen at Wayne's words.

 _"If you need someone to talk to, I'm here for that too."_

"He really is."

* * *

"You're crazy."

Wayne shrugged. "I don't think so."

"Yes you are, like. After what I just told you? Definitely."

Wayne only shrugged once more. "I really don't think so. It's just a crush, Seamus. And just because you've got a crush on one person doesn't mean you can't like other people too."

Seamus shook his head, shoving his hands into his pockets as they stepped out of the Entrance Hall into the crisp morning. The snow might have receded but it was still bloody cold. Smoke still threatened to puff from Seamus' mouth with every breath he took.

It had been weeks since the Yule Ball. Weeks of thinking, of considering in private, and slowly, tentatively – because Seamus reached a wall that he had no idea how to clamber over – of talking. To Wayne and Wayne only, because out of everyone, Wayne knew. He knew about Seamus, but unlike Hannah's just knowing, he was in the same boat. Or at least a little bit in the same boat. Not exactly, but closer than anyone else Seamus knew to speak to.

And it had helped. It had helped a lot. Seamus didn't know if he would ever wholly overcome his confusion, if he would ever grow to accept with such comfort what he was and what he liked, but Wayne helped him. It was impossible not to see Wayne's sexuality as normal, as acceptable, as _natural_ even, when someone like Wayne was the kind of person who acted as Seamus' role model.

But more than that, Wayne had been helpful in a very key way: he was still Wayne.

Seamus hadn't been close to Wayne. They'd been friends, it was true, and alongside Dean, Susan and Hannah, they five had become gradually closer over the past months. The past years, even. Yet even so, Seamus had never had any particular favour for Wayne. He was just a friend, and one who was quiet and considerate and gentle, who had a nice smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes when it grew exceptionally wide, who was left-handed and hence always sat on the far left end of their study table when they studied as a group in the library. Little things, little parts of him, Seamus had picked up, but nothing exceptional.

Now, however, Wayne was a person. He had grown into someone that Seamus had come to know, had grown familiar with, and that he knew as more than just a study partner. More specifically, he was someone more than just a fellow gay kid struggling through his fourth year of school. In fact, unless Seamus brought it up, Wayne didn't talk about their similar sexualities at all. It was as though it wasn't especially exceptional to him, no more worthy of mentioning than the colour of his hair or the cut of his robe.

It was normal. It was so normal and it was a part of him. That was what Seamus learned most of all.

It was because of that easiness that Seamus found he could talk to Wayne. Even with the whole 'fancying' thing between them, he could talk to him without fear of being rejected, of being hated because of who Seamus was, and that… that was nice. It was unexpected and Seamus had grown to cherish it. Dean was his best friend, would likely always be his best friend and was definitely the person Seamus – horribly - fancied, but Seamus didn't think he could talk to him about this. Not yet and maybe not ever.

Wayne made him think. He made Seamus questions himself and the solidly held notion that he wasn't allowed this. That he wasn't allowed to date a boy because it was wrong. Wayne provided an alternative, and although Seamus couldn't rid himself of thoughts of what his family would think, of the constant muttering in the back of his mind that he wasn't _supposed_ to do this, he couldn't help but let himself be coaxed by Wayne's words.

And besides, Wayne was awfully nice. He was kind and gentle and encouraging. He always listened when Seamus felt the need to explode with words of his confusion and didn't interrupt him by trying to convince him otherwise, even if Seamus detachedly knew that some of what he said was likely as offensive and upsetting to Wayne as it was to himself. Wayne just listened and then offered an alternative.

Because Wayne _was_ nice. He was nice, and… and maybe he was pretty cute as well. Seamus had come to appreciate the moments he smiled, especially those wide enough to scrunch his face into crinkles of amusement or delight. It didn't help Seamus' subconscious attempts to convince himself that he shouldn't think as such, that he shouldn't go there, and it especially didn't help when Wayne told him he fancied him. That he still fancied him and that he didn't mind that Seamus liked Dean.

Which was strange. It was strange and confusing in a whole knew way.

Shaking his head, Seamus dropped his chin to his chest and trained his eyes on his feet as they trekked down the hill towards the lake and the Second Triwizard Task. There was a trickle of similar students around them, but they weren't within hearing distance. Seamus suspected Wayne was responsible for that distancing; Seamus had only really noticed there always seemed to be a distinct bubble of privacy around them when they spoke after he gained enough sense to keep his head when he exploded into near hysterics into Wayne's supportive ear.

Wayne did it on purpose. For Seamus. As he did with quite a few things, Seamus had also noticed.

"You're so weird," he muttered.

Wayne laughed. "Yeah, I guess so."

"You're not supposed to take things like that so easily, like."

"Take what things?"

"People telling you you're weird."

"And if I am? I don't have a problem with that. It's just how I am."

 _Just how I am_. Seamus gave a mental shake of his head. Wayne had said just those words countless times in reference to himself. Seamus could only admire that he was so comfortable and accepting of his inclinations. Surprisingly, it actually helped to see that too. Seeing Wayne so content with himself was one of the biggest reasons that Seamus thought that maybe, just maybe, it might be alright to be content too.

"Why would you want to date someone who fancied someone else?" He asked.

"I already said," Wayne replied. "Because I like you, and I don't think that you don't like me either."

"Of course I don't, it's just that I –"

"Like Dean more?" At Seamus' wince, Wayne smiled. He hardly seemed deterred in the slightest. "I know, Seamus. But that doesn't mean that you might not come to like me more, does it?"

Wayne hadn't been pushing for anything further since the first time he'd told Seamus how he felt. He hadn't even been the one to bring it up this time. It had been Seamus, curious as to whether the truth of Wayne's words still applied.

Which they did. Apparently they hadn't been shaken in the slightest, regardless of what Seamus had said over the past weeks and how offensively his words could be construed. Seamus had asked because he'd been curious, but he couldn't deny that now he was more than definitely caught on the thought. He _did_ like Dean more, much as the thought made him cringe slightly. He did, but he liked Wayne too.

 _"Just because you've got a crush doesn't mean you can't fancy other people too."_

Though Seamus thought it wrong to think like that, he couldn't deny that Wayne's words resounded within him. It might not be right but it was true. And Seamus really did like Wayne. It shouldn't be like that, maybe, but he did.

"You'd really want to date me?" Seamus asked, not for the first time that morning.

His sidelong glance towards Wayne showed his bright smile and immediate nod, no pause even for thought. "I really do. But only if you'd want to try with me too."

"But…" Seamus scratched at his head. "But what do boys do on dates with other boys?"

"Well, probably the same sort of thing that boys do with girls," Wayne supplied. "I could only imagine."

"What?"

"I've never actually dated anyone either, Seamus."

Seamus blinked before dropping his gaze once more. "Oh."

"Is it that surprising? Don't you think you would have heard that I'd been dating another boy at school, maybe?"

Seamus only nodded, He would have. He knew he would have, for though Wayne was very accepting of his sexuality and though it was more of a pureblood thing that it was considered unnatural, that didn't necessarily mean that it was the norm. Seamus suspected he would have heard if someone in their school was gay. Or, more correctly, if someone came out as openly gay. According to Wayne, there were probably more than a few just like them that walked the corridors of Hogwarts.

"I expect that we'd just do the same thing," Wayne continued. "Go to Hogsmeade or something, maybe get a drink somewhere. Go to the shops, get some lunch. Have a snowball fight –"

"A snowball fight?" Seamus asked, glancing up in surprise.

"Well, not anymore, obviously, since there's no more snow." Wayne smiled. "But essentially the same sort of thing. Just have fun, you know?"

Shaking his head once more, Seamus watched as Wayne fell silent at his side and continued down the hill. It sounded easy when Wayne said it, and nothing particularly different to how friends spent time with one another. Seamus could try that. More than that, he found he wanted to try it. It might send a twinge of unease through his gut, but Seamus did want to try. Maybe it was because he was so focused upon the subject at present, but he was unendingly curious to discover what it was all about. Something that he knew was wrong and yet felt so unshakeably embedded within him? Seamus sorely longed to try.

Besides, if it was with Wayne then he'd probably be alright with it. Even if it couldn't be Dean, Seamus wasn't sure if he would want it to be. He knew he fancied Dean but the thought of him finding out still filled him with terror, even weeks after his realisation.

So he agreed. "Okay," Seamus said quietly. "Okay, then. Let's, like, let's do it or something."

They were at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, within sight of the lake and the Triwizard Tournament stands seated alongside it. An increasingly large clutch of students had positioned themselves along the shoreline but they were still a distance away when Wayne stopped and turned wide-eyed towards Seamus. "Really?"

Seamus stared at him for a moment before frowning. "You sound like you didn't even think I'd say yes."

"It's not that," Wayne said with a shake of his head. "Or, well, maybe it is. I wanted you to say yes but I wasn't sure if you'd be up for it or anything."

Seamus shrugged. "Well, maybe I am, like."

"Maybe you are…" Wayne echoed. He stared at Seamus for a long moment, so long that Seamus couldn't help but shift in step. Then he smiled so widely his whole face transformed into an expression of utter delight. "Maybe you are?"

Before Seamus could reply, Wayne reached for him and grabbed his wrist before starting towards the Forbidden Forest. Seamus didn't even have the chance to protest their approach, however, before they stopped just inside, slipping behind the shade of a tree and out of sight of the line of students still dribbling down from Hogwarts to the Black Lake. Seamus only spared them a glance before his attention was drawn to Wayne once more.

Wayne was still smiling impossibly widely. It was a full-blown grin and he seemed to radiate warmth for it. As he urged Seamus behind the tree, his hold of Seamus' wrist shifted down to his hand instead and he squeezed it in a confusing combination of tightness and gentleness. "You really mean that?" He said, and it was almost in a whisper.

Seamus only hesitated to reply for a moment. Only for a moment in which the nagging voices in his mind bellowed _"You can't do that!_ " and whimpered _"No, what if someone finds out?_ " in a confusing combination. But Seamus couldn't say no. Not when he wanted to simply try. Not when Wayne was staring at him so openly, wide-eyed and smiling with such hope. He nodded. "'Course I do. I wouldn't have said it if I didn't mean it, like."

Somehow, Wayne's smile seemed to grow even wider. He glanced down at Seamus' hand still captured in his own and curled his fingers gently around Seamus'. It was an odd feeling, strangely intimate in a way that Seamus had never experienced before, and he felt a shiver dance down his spine. "That's great," Wayne said simply, and though the words were just that, so utterly simple, they seemed to embody everything in Wayne's expression.

Seamus didn't know what to do after that. Should he say the same? Should he offer something else? Did they set up a date to go to Hogsmeade together or something? Seamus wasn't sure how he felt about that. He agreed to date Wayne, but he didn't think he'd want everyone to know about it, and something so public would certainly become realised by the rest of the school.

He didn't need to reply, however, for Wayne continued a moment later. "Hey Seamus. Tell me if you don't want to, but I was wondering. I'd really like to, so… I was wondering if I might be able to kiss you? Again?"

Seamus snapped his gaze upwards from their hands, from where Wayne still squeezed his fingers gently, and blinked at him in surprise. A sudden flush of memory, of the last time Wayne had kissed him, rose to the forefront of his mind. The softness, the gentleness, the wonder that was so vastly at odds with how Seamus knew he should have felt. He found himself nodded jerkily before he truly considered himself.

Wayne's smile was soft and just a little hesitant too. It was only then that Seamus realised that, truly, Wayne didn't know all that much what he was doing either. But he was the one who leaned towards Seamus, closing the distance between them, and pressed their lips together.

It was short. It wasn't anything like the fierce making out that Seamus looked upon with a confusing mixture of disgust and curiosity as his seniors lost themselves in one another in the middle of the Gryffindor common room. It was just as soft and gentle as the first time, just as brief, and yet Seamus felt himself become suddenly light, unexpectedly drawn into the tenderness. Tension he hadn't even realised had settled upon his shoulders eased and he returned the gentle touch with an accompanying squeeze of Wayne's hand.

It didn't last long. Seamus didn't think he would have wanted it to last long. Not that time, at least. Not when the entirety of their school was slowly congregating along the lakeside so nearby. But that didn't seem to matter, for when Wayne drew away he was still smiling so brightly he had practically become his own sun. Seamus couldn't help but smile back, if a little abashedly. He'd never done this before either, had never really considered it. But already, though he vehemently didn't want anyone to find out, Seamus decided that he was liking it.

Wayne was the one who drew them back from the privacy of the Forbidden Forest, and though his hand was still upon Seamus' when he urged him in his wake, he seemed to realise Seamus' unspoken concerns for he dropped his grasp before they were back on the path. They still walked side-by-side for the rest of the short trip, however. Very closely side-by-side at that, and for a moment Seamus couldn't even bring himself to care.

Until Dean appeared, striding towards them from the direction of the lake. Seamus instinctively paused in step, found himself frozen, and could only spare a half-desperate glance towards Wayne before Dean was upon them. What if he knew? What if he realised? What would he think of them together? Seamus knew he'd been a little awkward around Dean in recent weeks given his feelings and that he had no idea what to do with them. But this was even worse. Seamus adored Dean even as only his best friend, but in that moment he was utterly terrified of him.

But Dean didn't seem to realise. He didn't seem to realise anything was out of the ordinary at all, but simply fell into place at Seamus' other side and as a result urged them to continue towards the lake. It was with a jerking step that Seamus picked up his feet once more. "There you are," Dean said, nudging Seamus' shoulder with his own. "I was wondering where you got off to. I didn't see you in the Great Hall at breakfast."

"I was –" Seamus began and hoped the waver he heard in his voice wasn't as pronounced to Dean's ears. "I was just talking to Wayne."

Dean glanced towards Wayne over Seamus' shoulder and offered him a smile. "Oh, sure thing. You guys have been hanging out quite a bit lately, haven't you?"

"Yeah, something like that," Wayne said softly, his usual quiet and politely patient tone reinstalled in the presence of more than just Seamus. He spared Seamus a glance and the barest touch to his hand that Seamus suspected he somehow managed to keep entirely hidden from view. "I'll talk to you later, okay, Seamus?"

"Okay," Seamus said, though couldn't help but nod his head insistently. He really did want to talk to Wayne about this, to work things out. To work out what boys even did when they were dating. The prospect was as unnerving as it was captivating.

"I'll see you around, Dean," Wayne said by way of farewell, and with a wave towards them both started ahead towards the bulk of yellow and black-scarfed students.

Seamus continued at Dean's side in contemplative silence, caught in the throughs of his own thoughts and barely even considering that the Second Triwaizard Task was on the cusp of beginning. He was only drawn from his thoughts when Dean led them to a spot at the edge of the shore that provided a descent view of what Seamus could only suspect was about to take place. Dean's quiet words tugged at his attention.

"You're getting to be pretty good friends with Wayne then, I suppose?" Dean said, and it was almost more of a question than a simple observation.

Seamus bit back on his desire to quail, to jump to denials and excuses as every voice in his mind was demanding he do. Instead, he just nodded. "Yeah, he's actually a pretty top bloke, like."

Dean nodded, smiling, before he nudged Seamus' shoulder once more. "Should I be getting jealous that I'm losing my best friend to a usurper, then?"

It was all Seamus could do to laugh alongside Dean as Dean himself chuckled at his own joke. He bit sharply upon the twinge that sprung in his chest, the seizing in his stomach and the wince at those offhanded words, because Dean had no idea the weight of them. He had no idea that Seamus fancied him, even if he had just agreed to go out with Wayne in what he suspected – hoped – to be a relatively secretive manner.

Seamus had to forcibly thrust that thought aside. It was a struggle, but it helped that Dean didn't appear to dwell upon it. Instead, as the Triwizard contestants arrived, Dean seemed to forget about their conversation entirely, falling into his excitement just as feverishly as those around them.

The Second Task was a good distraction, if not entirely effective. Seamus was torn between thinking about Wayne and wondering, and considering Dean from the corner of his eye. It was perhaps a good thing that Dean was so distracted, that he even sprung a conversation with Neville when Neville arrived at their side partway through the Task.

Seamus didn't think he was being the best of friends at that moment, but he didn't think Dean cared. Or perhaps more likely, Dean didn't seem to notice. And even more importantly, he didn't say a word more in reference to Wayne. Seamus could only breathe a sigh of relief that, at least for now, his secret was safe.

* * *

A dark shadow hung over the entire hall. Barely a person spoke and those that dared to break the silence did so in little more than a murmur. Seamus couldn't blame them. He was naturally inclined to verbosity himself, and when not plagued by assaulting thoughts knew he was responsible for speaking perhaps a little more than was necessary. Yet even he couldn't bring himself to speak.

It felt like there should have been some change. That there should have been sad music, or black hangings draping the walls like thick tapestries. That someone should have given a speech already, professing the tragedy in place of what should have been cries of triumph from one of the three schools that participated in the Triwizard Tournament. There hadn't been. Not yet, anyway.

Seamus poked at his breakfast with his fork. It might have been appetising but he found he didn't have much of a stomach for it that morning. He wasn't the only one either, he noticed. Almost every person around him was just as subdued. At his side, Dean was similarly making a mess of his cereal, turning it into a sludgy mess rather than taking a bite. Seamus couldn't help but stare at him for a moment. For whatever reason, Dean looked hit unexpectedly hard by the death of Cedric Diggory. If Seamus were to compare it, he seemed almost on par with the grief that radiated from the silent Hufflepuff table.

Seamus didn't think himself heartless. He felt the loss of Diggory like a blow to the chest, but that blow was more distinctly shocked than pained or mournful. Knowing another student, even distantly, and then having them suddenly die was confronting to say the least. Heartbreaking more profoundly, and that heartbreak was written upon many a Hogwarts student's face, as well as more than a few of the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students.

Diggory was dead. He was dead and Seamus had seen him. He still couldn't quite overcome that shock, the sight of the Hufflepuff boy barely a few years older than himself lying limply sprawled and ghostly pale on the grass before the maze entrance. His lifelessness could have been a trick of the light in the darkening gloom, but the longer Seamus stared the less he thought so. The more he realised. It was as though every single member of the audience had ceased breathing.

Diggory was dead. He was dead. That shouldn't have happened. And more than that… more than that, there were whispers that were circulating that it was He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named who'd done it. Whispers that came from Harry as their source, for Harry was the only other person who'd been there.

Seamus didn't know what to think. He was torn between his persisting shock and the horror of what those whispers meant, of the possibility of them being true. They couldn't be, could they? They weren't… were they? He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had died years ago, when Seamus was no more than a baby. It was impossible that he was back. The few whispers around the hall loud enough to be heard breathed that it was impossible. That it couldn't be true. That Harry, the only one who could know, must have been lying. It was the only possible explanation, Seamus knew that.

And yet somehow, despite those questioning murmurs, some terrified yet convinced voice in the back of his mind spoke otherwise. It was the same voice that reminded Seamus that Harry had been telling the truth before, about not putting his name in the Goblet of Fire when no one had believed him, and years ago when the school had turned against him once more and declared him the heir of Slytherin. Harry hadn't been. He hadn't been in the wrong. Seamus found it almost impossible to consider that he would be lying this time, too. Harry was strong, and honest, and though he was prone to snapping in a fit of temper Seamus knew he wasn't the type of person to spout lies to draw attention to himself. If anything, Harry would most likely prefer the opposite.

Harry hadn't been in Gryffindor Tower the previous night. Neither had Ron, for that matter, nor Hermione or any of the rest of the Weasleys. Seamus couldn't blame him; Harry had looked a mess when he'd appeared out of thin air the previous evening, clutching Diggory's wrist in one hand and the Triwizard cup in the other. He was likely in the Hospital Wing which, though Seamus regretted not having the chance to ask questions of him for his absence, he recognised as likely being a good thing. Seamus wouldn't have been the only one to pester him with questions.

Glancing up from his breakfast once more, Seamus spared his attention for the silent Hufflepuff table once more before his gaze drifted automatically towards Dean at his side. It had become a periodic habit that morning – his plate, the Hufflepuff table, Dean, then back to his plate again – and Seamus couldn't bring himself to break the cycle. He wasn't even sure how anyone was going to make a move from the Great Hall that morning. Certainly no one had moved just yet.

At his glance, Seamus noticed Dean squeeze his eyes closed briefly before opening them and returning to jabbing at the sludge in his bowl. He seemed pained, as though the grief that had taken the school by force was wracking him on a physical level. Seamus couldn't help but grow concerned. "Hey, are you alright?"

He spoke in barely more than a whisper, yet to Seamus' ears his words sounded far too loud. He hunched his shoulders slightly as not only Dean but several of his surrounding Gryffindors glanced his way. Only to turn away again a moment later. All but Dean, that was.

Dean attempted a small smile, though to Seamus' eyes it was clear he didn't feel any kind of joy. "What are you talking about?"

"You look really upset," Seamus murmured, quieter this time.

Dean's smile slipped and he dropped his gaze once more. For someone of an admirable height, he could appear quite diminutive at times. "I don't think I'm any more upset than anyone else. Especially not the Hufflepuffs." He spared a glance in the direction of the Hufflepuff's table before dropping his eyes once more. "Fuck, but that must be really hard, mustn't it? Imagine if that happened… imagine if…"

Seamus nodded. He could imagine, even if it horrified him to think it. What if it had been a Gryffindor senior who had been in Diggory's place? Someone like Troy Hickson, or Uma Mae, or one of the Weasley twins? It was bad enough as someone from a different house. What would it be like really knowing them? Seamus found himself glancing towards the Hufflepuff table once more. His attention settled upon Wayne where he sat alongside Susan and Hannah. He'd wanted to approach Wayne that morning, but he hadn't. He didn't know whether that approach would have been appreciated, whether Wayne would even want to hear his words of sorrow and sympathy.

In the past months, they'd grown close. Very close, even, if only on a private level. And yet Seamus still didn't know if Wayne would have wanted that.

"Yeah," Seamus muttered, glancing back towards Dean. "That would be really shit."

Dean shook his head, yet in regret rather than denial. "I can't even imagine… I don't think I could –" He broke himself off with a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut again. He really did appear physically pained. He continued without opening them. "Did you see his parents, Seam? Did you see them when Diggory was… when he appeared?"

Seamus didn't nod until Dean opened his eyes and glanced his way once more. When he did it was a little pained as well. He remembered. He remembered very well, and it had been horrible. Seamus swore he could still hear their heartbroken sobs.

"I keep thinking about them," Dean continued, barely loud enough for Seamus to hear. "I keep thinking about how they looked and what it would be like for them. He was their only kid, you know, Seam? Imagine if –" He broke himself off and shook his head. "I couldn't even imagine what that would be like, I don't think. If that happened to my mum and Andrew or something, that would be…"

Seamus was silent. Not because he didn't agree necessarily, but because he didn't know what to say. In that moment he thought he understood Dean's distress a little bit better; it wasn't only because of Diggory, but because of what his death meant to others or, more specifically, to his family. It was strange to consider, perhaps. Dean had only a small family, and he was only half related to most of them. Yet he adored them, if in an exasperated fashion at times. Dean spoke of his sisters Millie and Keira and June, of his mam. He spoke of Andrew, yet when he did it was with fondness, with the real affection of a son to a father as though Andrew truly were his dad.

Seamus had a big family. A very big family, and in the holidays, at every get-together, there was always so many it was a riot of noise and excitement and enthusiasm, and often more than a little bit of swearing and objection because that was how they were. Seamus had spent his entire childhood immersed in that environment, and rarely interacted with those outside of his relatives. Why would he when he had more than enough cousins to be his friends?

And yet in spite of that, Seamus wasn't close to them. Or at least, he didn't think he was as close to them as Dean seemed to his own family. Seamus loved his uncails and aintíns, his grandparents and his cousins. He loved his mam and his dad, and he thought the world of Eoghan because he was quite possibly the most incredible person to ever exist. And yet with the exception of Eoghan, Seamus didn't have that same connection with his family as Dean did. He might have with his mam, but recently the fear of what she would think, the memory of every offhanded comment pertaining to what she perceived as being so wrong and unnatural, seemed to push her away. Dean's love for his family was unconditional, as was theirs for him, and yet Seamus knew with a sick feeling in his gut that, should his mam find out about the discovery he'd made of himself, she would love him a little less for what he was.

Which she would, eventually. Seamus had accepted that, slowly and painfully, with more than a little detached horror that he struggled to ignore. How could he not when he was dating Wayne, someone who he really, truly liked? It didn't even matter that he was a boy sometimes, though Seamus doubted he would ever think of a girl in quite the same way. He'd simply come to like Wayne.

Thrusting the thought aside, because that was something very definitely for another time, Seamus shifted in his seat so he was just a little closer to Dean. Just close enough at he could slump slightly and in doing so into Dean's shoulder in a touch that was a little like a hug. The reluctance for such easy contact, that he shouldn't touch Dean at all, had faded over the past months when Seamus realised that he couldn't _not_ do it. He knew he still fancied Dean in spite of what he had with Wayne, but that was something aside for the relationship he had with his best friend. Or at least it felt like it at that moment.

Dean didn't say anything but he didn't draw away from Seamus either. After a moment he even slumped into him in return just a little, sparing Seamus a glance that wasn't quite a smile but was nearly as good as. Seamus was glad for that. If he could offer even a little support when Dean was clearly hurting he was happy. Even if they were just best friends, something that Seamus didn't let himself think of progressing otherwise, he would be content.

They didn't speak for a time until, with a short huff Dean tipped his head in the direction of the Hufflepuff table. "Wonder how they're going."

Seamus shook his head. "Dunno. It'd be shit, like."

"Have you talked to any of them?"

"Me? Why me?"

"Well, you're kind of better friends with Wayne than me, at least, and I'm pretty sure Susan and Hannah like you better too."

Seamus wasn't so sure of that latter suspicion – pretty much everyone liked Dean and he was fairly sure that it was no competition who was the more favoured out of the two of them – but he didn't refute it. He didn't even get the chance to consider doing so, for in that moment he noticed several Hufflepuffs rise to their feet and, in a motion so fast it must have been driven by more than the simple closing of breakfast, hastened from the room. There was a pause as more than just Seamus and Dean stared after them before a few more rose to their feet and scurried in their wake. Then more. Then a few more.

Seamus' gaze was drawn to where Wayne sat, to Susan and Hannah as they stared after their friends. Hannah stared only briefly before she was rising to her feet and, with face crumpling in a mixture of concern and misery, almost ran from the room. Susan paused a moment to share a glance with Wayne, touching his shoulder briefly, before she too rose and hastened after her. Seamus watched Wayne as he in turn watched them go.

The hall stilled for a moment after that. Only half of the Hufflepuffs remained but those who did appeared to have deflated further. Wayne himself sagged until he seemed to nearly fold himself onto the table, raising a hand to hide his face. Seamus stared at him, and the longer he stared the more he hated it. Wayne was his friend, but he was also more than that. Seamus didn't want to leave Dean's side, not when he too was feeling all sorts of something that was clearly upsetting him. But Wayne was alone across the room with Susan's departure and looked distinctly dejected for his isolation and grief.

Seamus spared a glance for Dean, and it was only a glance. A glance was all was needed to see that Dean's expression had grown from pained to sympathetic as he drew his gaze along the Hufflepuff table. He was still hurting, Seamus knew, but right now… right now, Wayne needed someone more.

Swinging a leg over the back of the bench, Seamus rose to his feet. "Sorry but I'll see you later, Dean. I've got to…" He trailed off as he turned and didn't wait for Dean to glance in his direction, to acknowledge his words, before he was starting across the room.

Seamus wasn't sure if anyone watched him. He tried very hard to ignore anyone who possibly was. A very loud voice was abruptly shouting in his head and questioning his intelligence with words of _"What are you doing?"_ and _"People will know, they'll realise!"_ It was so loud as to almost overwhelm his sympathy, his resolution to take himself to Wayne's side and offer his support. But Seamus shunted it aside, because just for a moment it didn't matter. It didn't matter if people knew, if they understood and saw Seamus for what he was. Wayne needed a friend, possibly even needed Seamus specifically, and though it was hardly a situation of owing, Seamus knew that owe he certainly did. Wayne had given him so much that year already; a return of that support even if only to a comparatively negligible degree, was necessary.

But it was more than that. It was more because because Seamus wanted to help him. He liked Wayne. He really did.

Still ignoring the hall, the Hufflepuffs that shifted slightly in their seats at his approach, Seamus silently took himself to Wayne's side and lowered himself onto the bench next to him. Even in his grief, Wayne wasn't the type of person to ignore others. He immediately turned his head, forehead still in his palm, and drew his gaze towards Seamus.

He didn't smile. That was very telling, because Wayne always had a smile to spare for Seamus, even when he was acting stupid. A kind smile, a gentle smile, a smile that told him he supported his attempts and encouraged him to challenge the deeply ingrained beliefs within Seamus that screamed that he not ignore what was a _very right opinion_ in the first place.

Not now. Now he didn't seem capable of it.

It was that as much as anything that urged Seamus to reach for his hand. Only the one under the table, where Wayne's fingers curled limply in his lap, but the effort was enough that Seamus almost shrunk from the attempt. He managed, though, managed to slip his hand into Wayne's and interlace their fingers in a way that they'd done before but only in the privacy of one another's company. And before the entire hall, though of oblivious eyes that Seamus desperately begged they _please, please don't see_ , he squeezed Wayne's hand in a gesture of support that was as much as he knew how to give.

And Wayne crumpled. Just as Hannah had, his face seemed to fold in on itself. Perhaps it was a Hufflepuff thing, that they were all so close, so much of a big, extended family that actually cared for one another, that they felt Diggory's loss on a personal level. Wayne still held Seamus' eyes but his own welled with tears, his chin trembled slightly and his brow creased into a mess of pain.

Seamus wasn't good at comforting people. Or he didn't think he was anyway, regardless of what Dean might say of his efforts. But even so, he couldn't leave things as they were, even as he knew he wouldn't be able to try his best before a whole room of people. Despite logically knowing he wasn't the centre of their attention, Seamus couldn't help but feel spotlighted before.

So instead, he leaned towards Wayne to murmur in his ear quietly enough that not even the third year girl on Wayne's other side would be able to hear. "Come on. Let's go someplace else."

Wayne nodded and straightened in his seat. Then, before Seamus could even consider his dilemma and how to get around it, he unlocked his hand from Seamus' and rose to his feet. Seamus felt a flush of guilt at his upwelling gratitude; it was bad, terrible even, that he would feel terrified of being seen holding another boy's hand – and Wayne of all people, who was possibly the kindest person Seamus knew – but relieved he was. Without another word, he too rose and they passed from the Great Hall in step.

Wayne barely made it into the Entrance Hall before a sob was loosed from his throat. It echoed just slightly, even as he attempted to muffle it with a hastily raised hand, closing his eyes as a pair of tears sprung from his eyes. Seamus paused in step as Wayne struggled to compose himself. He visibly fought to withhold his tears and largely failed doing so. Though he hated himself for doing it, Seamus glanced over his shoulder towards the Great Hall, towards any potential eyes that might be peering after them, before sidling closer to Wayne's side.

"Hey. Don't, like, try so hard not to cry." Wayne's sob of reply was a little strangled and Seamus continued. "There's nothing nothing wrong with crying, you know."

He didn't truly believe that – or at least not for himself. Seamus' Uncail Jack had scolded him when he was a child for crying, much to Fergus' and Dillon's nodding agreement, and though both Eoghan and Seamus' dad had stood up for him and attempted to convince him otherwise, Seamus couldn't quite reconcile being able to do so again. Jack's words that "Crying isn't for boys" and "Pull yourself together, waterworks won't solve anything" still rung in Seamus' mind. He'd been seven when it happened and Seamus hadn't let himself cry since.

But this was different. It was different when it was for Wayne, and he looked so sad and sore that Seamus could consider if only this once it would be better for it to happen. So with another glance spared towards the Great Hall, he closed the remaining distance between them, grasped Wayne's hand once more and tugged gently. "Come on. Let's go somewhere you can sit down and cry. Just stop trying so hard not to, yeah?"

Wayne only uttered another muffled sob in reply.

Seamus ended up leading them outside. It wasn't quite warm, but it wasn't cold either. Skirting through the grounds, down a slight decline towards a ring of benches that was tucked out of discernible view and Seamus and Wayne had discovered some time ago – and used to their advantage – they settled down.

Wayne was fully crying by that point. He'd dropped his hand from his mouth and simply let the tears fall. Seamus maintained a feeble attempt at verbal comfort, squeezing Wayne's hand and sitting so close beside him that their shoulders pressed together, but he felt useless. He was uncomfortable to be so out in the open and holding Wayne's hand, even if they'd done just that so many times before it was almost natural, and the guilt that arose as a result of realising that ungrateful thought made it somehow harder to offer his support. Wayne needed the help and Seamus was compromised.

It wasn't fair. That wasn't fair to Wayne at all.

With another violent mental shove of the mews of distress within him, Seamus edged just a little closer to Wayne where they sat on the curved stone bench. Not only was the little alcove tucked from view but also defended from the thin breeze dragging across the grounds. Wayne's sniffles resounded slightly off the stone pavers beneath their feet but not noticeably. Seamus doubted anyone would be close enough to hear them anyway.

Though he still murmured quietly, Seamus didn't know what to say. His empty platitudes seemed so useless in the face of Wayne's grief, even if his sobs did seem to soothe just slightly. Not that it mattered, however. As it happened, Wayne didn't need him to say anything. He was the one who spoke first, as he tended to be when it was just the two of them.

"Thanks, Seamus," Wayne said with a sniff. Wiping a hand beneath his nose, he met Seamus' gaze with a watery one of his own. "Sorry for making a scene."

Seamus shook his head, shrugging as he leaned just a little more into Wayne. Wayne was taller than him – quite a bit now, given that he appeared to have widened the gap even further in the past months – and Seamus could quite easily drop his chin onto Wayne's shoulder. That gesture too was almost comfortable now; at Christmas, Seamus would have been horrified by such a display between two boys in _that_ way, but now it was different. They'd tried and practiced, with Wayne coaxing Seamus into dropping his guard with the assurance that it wasn't wrong, it wasn't unnatural, and no, no one was around to see them.

It felt almost comfortable now, and Seamus was glad he could manage it easily enough, for Wayne shifted further towards him with the gesture. "You weren't making a scene, like," Seamus said, speaking more into Wayne's neck than his ear. "Pretty sure every Hufflepuff was the same. Probably not just the Hufflepuffs, too."

"Yeah," Wayne sighed, leaning back into Seamus as though deflating further. "It's just that… it just really hurts."

"Yeah."

"Cedric was just the nicest guy."

"Yeah, he was a pretty top bloke."

"Everyone loved him," Wayne continued, and it almost sounded as though he spoke more to himself than to Seamus. "I don't know how it is in other houses, but in Hufflepuff everyone knows everyone." Wayne paused to sniff once more, wiping a loose tear from his cheek with the hand that wasn't grasping Seamus' like a lifeline. "I mean, _really_ knows everyone. I've talked to Cedric so many times, and you really couldn't meet a nicer person and… and it's just so hard to think that he's gone."

Seamus nodded slightly, awkwardly with his chin placed as it was. Hufflepuff did sound like a tighter group than the rest of the houses, even Gryffindor, and Seamus often found it impossible to think any less of his own house. "He must have been brilliant, like. Especially getting chosen for the Triwizard Tournament and all."

"He was," Wayne sobbed, pausing to scrub a hand across his eyes. "He really was. And he was smart, and funny, and really, really, _really_ nice and – I mean, everyone's going to miss him so much, and last night we saw Mr and Mrs Diggory and they looked absolutely shattered and…" He trailed off with another sob, another hand scrubbed to his eyes.

 _Just like what Dean said_ , Seamus thought, and felt another, different kind of guilt rise within him. Was there something wrong with him that he hadn't thought of that too? That Seamus hadn't immediately realised that, more than anyone, Diggory's parent would suffer the most. He wondered if he would have even realised they suffered quite so much if Dean hadn't laid it bare for him to see.

Quite against his will, Seamus' thoughts turned back to where they'd strayed before. He knew it was irrational, knew it was wrong, but the thought, _Would my own family care so much if I died?_ arose nonetheless. It was cruel, because Seamus loved his family and should think better of him, but…

 _They'll hate me when they find out_.

Wayne was speaking again, however, and with another flush of guilt Seamus dragged his mind back to the present and his words. "Thanks for sitting with me, Seamus. And for coming to get me. Hannah just about broke down so it's probably better that Susan's with her, but –"

"But you need someone too," Seamus finished for him. Wayne's feeble attempt at a smile arose and disappeared almost immediately. "'Course I would, Wayne. We're, like, boyfriends and all, aren't we? That's what we do, isn't it?"

The laugh Wayne uttered briefly was more of a sob once more. "Yeah, they do. You worked that out on your own, that one."

It was something of a sharp-edged joke between them, one that had evolved over the course of weeks spent in one another's company. That Wayne was the one to encourage Seamus, to urge him to let down his barriers and to consider his feelings as anything less than wrong. To encourage him to realise that what he wanted was 'natural' and 'alright' and that it didn't make him a terrible person to want it. Even to understand what was considered 'boyfriend behaviour'.

Seamus let Wayne's comment pass without the usual elbow shove and smiling indignation. Wayne was never one to shove back, Seamus had found, and unlike with Dean who gave as good as he got when it was directed at him, Seamus had to tamp back the instinct at times. He settled for a grin that he didn't feel. "Yeah, all on me own, like. Aren't I such a good pupil for you, Professor Hopkins?"

Wayne's laugh this time was a little more genuine, if only slightly. He nodded before leaning more heavily into Seamus. Seamus felt his heavy sigh more than it was heard. "Still, thank you. And for – I mean, I know it was hard for you, when you held my hand and everything, but it really helped." As if for emphasis, he gave Seamus' hand a squeeze.

It felt wrong. Those words, what they meant, felt wrong in a different way to how Seamus had become familiar with. Wayne shouldn't have to thank him so much for that. If he was a girl, or if Seamus was, it would have been utterly acceptable for the other to hold their hand, to offer the physical contact as support. It was once different because they were both boys. Because every time they touched one another, if it was more than with the casualness of friends, there would be someone to comment or snort in disgust.

Not now, though. In the silence and relative privacy of the grounds, there was no one to see. In a sudden rush of frustration, an upwelling anger even at the unfairness of it all, Seamus drew his chin away from Wayne's shoulder and straightened. He drew his hand from Wayne's, yet as Wayne glanced towards him questioningly, placed it along his jaw instead.

 _Why? Why is it so unfair?_ Seamus thought to himself as he met Wayne's soft eyes, reddened from a sleepless night and repressed tears. _Why can't I?_

Seamus leaned towards him and without waiting for the request as Wayne always gave him, without even glancing around them, he drew Wayne into a kiss. A small kiss, a brief touch of warm lips against wetly warm lips, before he broke away for a second. Then, raising his other hand to the other side of Wayne's face, he kissed him again. And again.

Wayne let him. He even sunk into the contact, parting his lips to deepen their kiss as his own hand rose to curl around the back of Seamus' head. In moments, Seamus lost himself in the feeling, forgetting their surroundings if only for a moment, and losing himself in a boy he'd come to like so much.

Because Seamus liked Wayne. He'd come to the realisation that he really, truly did like him. And even if it felt bad and immoral, even if the bone-deep belief still resided within him that he shouldn't be thinking of a boy in such a way, let alone touching one, Seamus did. He kissed and he touched, and he held Wayne as he crumpled once more and pressed his cheek against Seamus'.

He could do that much at least.


	7. Chapter 7 - Fifth Year - Part I

**Chapter 7: Fifth Year - Part I**

It hadn't been a good summer. Dean was almost glad to be heading back to Hogwarts, to saying goodbye to his family, because at least that was a return to normalcy that he hadn't experienced in what felt like years.

There were countless reasons for the discomfort of that break. Firstly was that the Wizarding world was up in arms. Dean knew because he made it his business to know. The previous year he'd made a point of subscribing to the _Daily Prophet_ , even if the grumbled words of Harry, Ron and Hermione alongside him made him nothing if not dubious of its content.

It had been a benefit, however, if only because it kept Dean up to date with what was happening in the world he briefly stepped out of over the summer. He learned that, despite Harry's words, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was still believed to be vanquished, and that Harry himself was supposedly nothing if not an attention-seeking little boy with a big mouth. He learned that the Ministry was aggressively opposed to Dumbledore's statements in agreement with Harry's words, and that the Wizarding world at large was furious for the disruption he was causing. That Dumbledore had been sacked from the Wizengamot, which, though Dean knew little enough about, he assumed was a big deal. He learned that, on top of that, despite disbelieving the _Prophet's_ claims, every witch and wizard was on edge. Visibly so, apparently _._

Secondly was that Dean's parents found out. It was impossible for them not to given that the owl bearing the _Prophet_ arrived at their breakfast table every morning, even if Dean did manage to ensure they didn't read it most of the time. He could pinpoint the exact moment his mum had decided something was seriously wrong in his world, and the shared glances she and Andrew spared one another when they thought he wasn't looking were very telling. They didn't remain silent for long, and within two weeks into Dean's holidays had requested he stay as close to home as possible.

And therein lay the third problem. Dean hadn't been able to see any of his friends. Even Neville, his closest-living housemate, he was able to see but briefly. More importantly, however, Dean had only been able to visit Seamus once, and then only at the very beginning of the holidays.

Dean loved the Finnigan's country steading, the Kavanagh manor, and would ask his parents if they could all stay there as they had before third year if he didn't recognise it as being rude to so impose upon Seamus' family. But with his mum's restrictions he was prevented from visiting his best friend and reduced to exchanging letters because, even though Seamus' dad was Muggle, the Kavanagh manor lacked a working telephone at the manor.

Dean never remembered just how much he missed Seamus over the summer when they were back at school. In the months between his third and fourth years, however, he was made blatantly aware of it. Dean may as well have been missing a limb. A talkative, smiley and enthusiastic limb, for Seamus really was attached to him more often than not. Even though Seamus had become close with the Hufflepuffs in the second half of the previous year, and with Wayne in particular, Dean knew they were still best friends. If he had anything to do with it, they always would be.

Except that Seamus was angry with him. Or something similar at least. Dean had deduced that much, though Seamus hadn't revealed as much in so many words. They exchanged letters every few days, and yet Seamus' had grown gradually yet noticeably shorter. He didn't seem to be leaving anything profound out, but his words and even the slant of his writing seemed somehow distracted. As though he hadn't the time or the inclination to send Dean a proper missive.

It hurt just a little. Or a lot. It hurt even more than Dean couldn't see him to ask Seamus about it to his face. Dean had never been one to leave confrontations hanging in the air. Seamus' letters became an itch he couldn't scratch that grew incessantly persistent.

So it was with relief that September the first approached, and Dean was almost begging his mum to hasten out the door before it was even ten o'clock on his morning to leave. She obliged, and though Andrew smiled and joked at Dean's enthusiasm from the doorstep as he waved them off, there was a tightness to both of his and Dean's mum's expressions that said they were worried. Dean didn't begrudge them that worry. He doubted they would be the only parents to be concerned to send their children off that year. He didn't even sigh with exasperation as his mum requested on their trip to Kings Cross that he send a letter "At least once a week, you hear me? At least."

When Dean arrived at platform nine-and-three-quarters, however, he realised that the wrongness of the holidays didn't stop at Hogwarts. The very reason for that realisation wasn't so much because of the slight underlying tension thrumming through every witch and wizard, though it was indeed noticeable. More than that, Dean knew something was wrong because he didn't see Seamus anywhere.

Each year since their first, it was Seamus who found Dean on the platform. Almost before Dean steadied himself after stepping through the barrier, Seamus was launching himself at him and squeezing him with a hug that from anyone else Dean would have felt awkward upon receiving. He didn't feel awkward with Seamus. It was impossible to be discomforted anymore; Seamus likely unknowingly forced Dean to find it acceptable. He wouldn't understand if Dean wasn't receptive to embraces.

It was different that year. Dean had grown significantly over the summer and was almost as tall as his mum, but even with his elevation that allowed him a relatively unimpeded glance around the platform he couldn't see Seamus anywhere. He caught sight of the back of a woman's sandy-coloured head that he thought might have been Mrs Finnigan, but she was heading towards the barrier and didn't turn towards him long enough for him to be sure.

"I wonder where Seamus is?" Dean's mum murmured at his side. It was just the two of them that had come to Kings Cross as it always was, for though Dean's younger sisters hardly needed the supervision anymore but Andrew remained at home with them. It had become a tradition after three years.

Dean hardly spared his mum a glance, frowning as he shook his head and cast another quick scan around himself. Was Seamus late? That was unusual for him. He'd told Dean on several occasions that he and his family always arrived at just past ten o'clock because it was better to be early than late when one had to jump across Irish Sea. Even with the assistance of magic, "Punctuality was always preferred". He should have been there.

Shaking his head, Dean turned on the spot. "I have no idea."

"Maybe he's already on the train?" His mum suggested, and though Dean nodded in acceptance of the suggestion it didn't soothe him. It was strange that Seamus wouldn't wait out for him as he always did, a strangeness that made the rest of the holidays feel even more disconcerting.

Maybe he really was angry with Dean. Was it because Dean hadn't come to visit? Dean felt a touch of annoyance at that. He knew the Finnigans liked to spend the holidays together as a big family, but Seamus could have come to see Dean if it so bothered him, couldn't he?

Couldn't he?

Turning towards his mum and struggling to force the frown from his brow, Dean leaned towards her to plant a kiss on her cheek. "You're probably right. Do you mind if I go and find him?"

His mum returned the gesture, looping an arm around Dean's neck in a brief, squeezing hug as she did. "Of course. You've only got about quarter of an hour until you need to go anyway."

"Thanks," Dean said as he drew away from her. "I love you."

"I love you too, sweetheart."

"I'll see you at Christmas, okay?"

"If not before," his mum said with a nod. "And I mean that about the letters, Dean. I want to know you're okay."

Dean didn't huff at her unnecessary wariness. He couldn't blame her; in reality, though he was happy to be heading back to Hogwarts, Dean was a little worried about leaving home. His family were Muggles, and Dean still had slight reservations that the fabled 'You-Know-Who' was back after nothing had become of Harry's words, but it didn't feel right. Something very definitely didn't feel right.

He paused once more to wave on the steps of the train before hauling his trunk on board and starting down the narrow passage within. It wasn't quite cluttered with students just yet, so Dean made easy work of peering through the glass doors of the cabins and glancing at the students already within.

It took barely any effort to find Seamus. Despite his concerns, Dean found himself automatically grinning as soon as he caught sight of him in the otherwise empty cabin. Without pause he pushed the door aside to step within. "Hey, you ass, what kind of a best friend are you that you won't even wait for me on the platform anymore?"

Seamus glanced towards at Dean immediately and in an instant his previously blank expression had widened into a smile. Although… it was definitely a smile, but to Dean it seemed somehow… off? Not quite as wide as usual? Dean fought the return of his frown, maintaining his own grin as he dragged his trunk after him and set about hauling it overhead onto the shelf. The in-built lightening Charm only eased the effort a little.

"Sorry," Seamus replied from behind him, and Dean did frown this time because something in his tone sounded off too. "I was going to wait, like, but me – me m-mam, she had to, um… she had to leave early so I just figured…"

Dean glanced over his shoulder as he heaved his trunk into place final shove. His frown deepened as his attention settled on Seamus.

Something was definitely wrong. In the moments since Seamus had trailed off, his smile had faded into blankness and his gaze turned out the window at his side. A hand had risen to his lips and seemingly unconsciously he'd set about chewing at his fingernails. A glance showed those of his other hand already torn to pieces. But more than that – more than that Seamus looked…

Pensive?

Seamus wasn't a deep-thinking person. He wasn't stupid by any stretch, but Dean had known him long enough to understand that he often acted with little thought for those actions. He lived in the moment, and usually those moments were exciting. Being Seamus' friend made life whirr past at a faster pace, with a more profound brightness, than Dean had encountered or experienced before he'd become his friend, and Dean loved Seamus for it. He'd only ever seen him lost in thought several times, one extended period of which arose the previous year but had passed with time to little apparent catalyst.

But this was different. Dean had never seen Seamus like this before. He didn't appear upset exactly, but there was definite distractedness to his expression, as though he was indeed lost in thought. Dean dropped his hands from his trunk – it had been hardly a stretch this year, he noted absently – and turned towards him. "Hey, are you okay?"

Seamus started slightly and glanced towards him, and Dean was only made more disconcerted for it. He was jumpy _and_ thoughtful now? Something was definitely wrong. "What?"

"You don't look so good. Did something happen?"

"What are you -?"

"You look like someone contemplating the meaning of life."

At that, Seamus offered another smile. This one was even more off, was a little sickly even, as though Dean had hit close to home. He still only shrugged it off offhandedly. "Yeah, something like that."

Lowering himself down onto the seat opposite Seamus, Dean dropped his elbows into his knees and leaned forward to study him. Each moment, each second of study that passed, he felt his certainty of that wrongness settle more firmly. Seamus wasn't angry with him as far as Dean could tell, not as he'd half feared he was. It was something else.

Heaviness. Detachedness. A touch of darkness beneath Seamus' eyes only enhanced by the heaviness of his eyelids, by the unusual paleness of his cheeks. He was as scruffy as always, but it looked almost sadly limp in comparison to his usual dishevelment. He looked – "You really don't look well, mate. What's wrong?"

Seamus had shifted his attention back out the window, studying the passers-by without appearing to see them, but at Dean's words he turned back towards him. His thumbnail was still caught between his teeth and he'd torn the white loose before he replied. "Nah, I'm just tired. Had a shit night sleep last night."

"How come?"

"Just Fergus being a prat," Seamus said, and there was an unspoken, heavy sigh behind his words. Dean knew Seamus' cousin, one of several who didn't attend Hogwarts as Seamus did but instead were home-schooled as many supposedly 'proper' purebloods were. He knew Fergus to be as much of a prat as Seamus made him out to be, because he'd met him in the holidays before third year. Except that when Seamus spoke this time, there was less angry annoyance and more resignation. More something more, something heavier and a little...

Detached? Where was that coming from?

Dean didn't like it at all. He straightened slightly in his seat before leaning towards Seamus once more. "Seriously, Seam, that can't be all of it. You didn't say anything about Fergus pulling shit on you in your letters." A pause, and then, "Why didn't you say anything?"

Seamus appeared on the verge of replying before both his and Dean's attention was caught by motion passing alongside their cabin door. A motion that paused in step and glanced towards them. Dean adopted a smile and offered a wave for Wayne, for Hannah who stood at his shoulder, but it appeared his greeting passed unnoticed. Wayne hardly seemed to see Dean at all, his attention fixed upon Seamus with an expression of nothing if not the same heaviness Dean saw in Seamus, that he heard in his heard voice. Heaviness and that something else.

It was only for a moment, however, before Dean was surprised to see them both turn away and disappear further down the carriage. That was unexpected; they'd shared a cabin with the Hufflepuffs since second year and their unexpected encounter alongside Hermione and Dean had expected them to this year too. More than that, Wayne and Hannah hardly seemed to have seen him at all. What was that all about?

Dean turned slowly back to Seamus and stared at him intently. Seamus had dropped his gaze to his knees to stare blindly as he chewed upon the nail of his index finger. "Did you…? Hey, Seam, did you have a fight with Wayne and Hannah or something?"

Seamus didn't glance up. He took a long moment to reply and when he did it was with such a small nod that Dean almost didn't see it. "Yeah. Something like that."

Dean slumped back in his seat. There was more to it than that, he could sense. There had to be, because neither Seamus nor Wayne and Hannah had seemed angry with each another. Subdued in their distractedness was what Dean would call it, which was strange because Seamus had never been subdued about anything.

There was definitely something more, something that had happened with Wayne, maybe, and Dean was at a loss. He knew Seamus and Wayne in particular were friends, had become quite close and had even felt a spark of something like jealousy that he had his best friend's attention so diverted from their constant companionship, but it was only sparingly. Was it a fight? Dean wouldn't have thought it would hit Seamus so hard.

Seamus didn't extrapolate, however. He didn't tell Dean what had happened or why it had happened. He only settled into his silence, chewing his fingernails with an almost single-minded determination that Dean hadn't seen of him before, and didn't speak another word. Dean found he couldn't bring himself to disrupt his distractedness. They sat in that silence for a long, long time.

* * *

Everything exploded before the night was out.

Dean hadn't expected it at all and was wrought with a mixture of shock, horror and anger as he watched Seamus at the centre of that explosion. Seamus had always been fiery, oftentimes quite literally in the magical sense, but this was something else. There was something other than the flames of anger driving his words as he shouted across the common room.

They'd returned to the common room as subdued as most of the students had been after the welcoming feast and the Sorting Hat's unexpected song. Gryffindor Tower and the fifth year boy's was even more so when Harry swept through the door with frustration and agitation flooding through him in slight, barely perceivable twitches.

Dean had tried to keep his cool. Before anger that wasn't quite triggered yet, it was always best to stay calm. He'd climbed into his West Ham coloured pyjamas – he'd grown incredibly fond of quidditch in the last years but Dean would always love football – and replied sedately to Harry's words. Even a little jokingly, though he wished he hadn't.

 _Better than Seamus'_ , he'd said when Harry had asked how his summer had been. He was an idiot.

Why had Dean said that? Why had he brought Seamus into the conversation he'd been having with Harry when he knew that the holidays, for whatever reason, were a touchy subject for Seamus? The words had simply sprung forth, brought about by Seamus' distractedly grumbling about Fergus as he'd prodded at a nick on his trunk that Dean could only guess was the work of his cousin. He truly wished he hadn't, even when it had drawn Seamus from his ensuing quietness, the pensiveness that had settled upon him throughout the entirety of the train ride to Hogwarts even when they'd begun speaking.

But Seamus was drawn to attention and he talked. Because Seamus always talked. he asked Harry about Diggory. He said how his mum was hesitant to let him come back to school – which Dean hadn't known about – and how Mrs Finnigan believed the _Daily Prophet_ rather than the reality as Harry had told it. He asked Harry, asked him about Diggory, and when he did it was with an almost desperate eagerness just short of pleading. To Dean's ears, Seamus sounded as though he was begging Harry to tell him a truth other than what his mum was so convinced of.

That underlying tension, that something-else that Dean hadn't quite been able pinpoint or identify since Kings Cross, seemed to settle on the fringes of Seamus' words.

Then they'd snapped. Both of them. Seamus disclaimed Harry and they were arguing, and Dean could only stare shocked, wide-eyes jumping between them as they bellowed at one another across the dorm. Seamus even went so far as to raise his fists.

That had been hours ago. Hours, after which all five of the boys in Dean's dorm had almost wordlessly taken themselves to their beds. After Seamus had fixed the curtains he'd torn from their hanging in his anger – his unexpected anger draped in that desperate edge – he'd retreated behind the privacy they bestowed. Dean stared for a long time at those curtains, listening to the sounds of the rest of his year mates, shock fading only slightly towards unease.

It didn't fade completely. Not really. Dean never would have expected such a thing of Seamus, even if Seamus was a volatile person in both a good and a bad way. Seamus and Harry were friends, and Seamus believed Harry about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Dean knew he did, had even claimed as much the previous year.

But now he said otherwise. Because of his mum? That didn't seem right, even knowing Mrs Finnigan as Dean did. He liked her and saw quite a lot of Seamus in her, and she was a strong woman and very set in her opinions. It wouldn't be inconceivable to consider her opinion overwhelming, except that that Dean had thought Seamus was just as opinionated. Just as steadfast in that opinion, too. In the past, especially concerning Harry, Seamus was always on his team, silently backing his claims even from a distance, even when it wasn't wanted or acknowledged. What had changed?

Dean was only just slipping into a tentative doze when Seamus' curtains fluttered. He only saw at all because he'd been staring across the room towards them for over an hour. The curtains weren't torn apart but there was still an edge of urgency to the motion when they were abruptly swept open and Seamus slipped from his bed. He almost disappeared from the dormitory for the speed of his movement. Dean found himself blinking blearily into proper wakefulness, attention drawn to the sound of Seamus' footsteps as they disappeared through the door.

Seamus didn't return. Maybe he would have, and Dean's pillow was definitely encouraging such a thought process, but Dean resisted the temptation and pushed himself to sitting. He was worried about Seamus. He hadn't been himself on the train, and that outburst but hours before, while not entirely uncharacteristic, had that edge of wrongness to it that Dean had felt increasingly throughout the summer. A wrongness that was only enhanced by Seamus' quietness on the train. Dean wasn't used to a quiet Seamus. He didn't know what to do about it.

Slipping from his bed, Dean tiptoed across the dorm. Harry, Ron and Neville had all fallen to sleep, and Dean could hear Ron's snoring as testament to his suspicions. It must be late, he considered, and moments later when he descended the stairs to the common room to find it empty but for Seamus that fact was confirmed.

Dean barely noticed the emptiness. Seamus was pacing across the rug before the fireplace as though he couldn't sit still, back and forth, back and forth. His thumbnail was caught between his teeth again and his eyes stared blankly at the floor before him as though he didn't see the carpet. It was an agitated image of the impression Seamus had presented on the train and Dean found himself hastening down the steps, concern mounting once more.

"Seamus?" He asked.

Seamus flinched slightly, even jumping a little before he spun in step towards Dean. He looked like a deer caught in a pair of headlights for a moment, shoulders tight with tension and wide-eyed. Then he sagged slightly, turned on his heel, and restarted his pacing.

"Seamus," Dean said again, crossing the room towards him in slow steps. He felt like he was approaching that very deer, wary and certain of the flight that was about to ensue. "What are you doing?"

Seamus shook his head and didn't slow in step as he replied. "I'm pissed off so I can't sleep," he said, taking another turn and starting back in the other direction. Then another turn and more pacing. Turn and pace. "I'm fucking pissed off, like, is what's wrong."

"But why?"

Dean knew it was a stupid question when he asked it, but he couldn't help but hope that Seamus would tell him the real reason for his distress. It was a hope in vain, however, for Seamus spun towards him fists clenching at his sides, and finally paused in step. He seemed to turn the full brunt of his previous anger upon Dean. "Why? _Why?_ Because Potter bloody well insulted me mam, that's why. He fucking – he just said –"

"Yeah, well, you did kind of insult him," Dean said, striving to assume his calm once more. He edged slightly towards Seamus until they were face to face. Or face to shoulder, as it would be. Dean might have grown taller that summer but Seamus not so much. "He was just defending himself."

Seamus scowled. "Yeah, well, he didn't have to go and insult me mam in the same breath, like! She's allowed to have an opinion and all. It's not like he proved his words or anything."

"Proved it?" Dean slowly folded his arms across his chest, not annoyed as much as he was wary. This didn't sound like Seamus at all. Not how his friend usually was. "You believed him last year."

Seamus' lip curled. "Yeah, well maybe now I don't anymore."

"Why not?"

"Maybe because it's bullshit?"

"But you believed him before."

"He hasn't proved anything!"

"But he's our friend," Dean said, keeping his tone calm and as reasonable as possible. Dean could understand dubiousness, had even felt his own over the summer, but he didn't disbelieve Harry. Not really. "He's our friend and he's come out with some pretty wild shit in the past, hasn't he? Maybe if you just –"

"What, so you're taking his side over mine?" Seamus snapped.

Dean frowned. "That's not what I said."

"It's what it fucking sounded like."

"Seamus, I'm not –"

"Aren't you me best friend? Shouldn't you choose me over Harry and his stupid, fucking, _impossible_ –"

"Seam, don't say that."

"He insulted me mam and I'm just supposed to sit with that?"

"Well, maybe your mum doesn't realise –"

Seamus swung a fist. It was so sudden and unexpected that Dean only managed to avoid it by stumbling backwards and nearly falling over. He steadied himself, staring at Seamus in wide-eyed shock.

Seamus glared right back at him. He was furious, breathing more heavily with his cheeks flushed and his fists raised before him as though fully prepared to throw another punch. To actually fight, not in the brief scuffles that resulted from nudging elbows and playfully tripping feet that he and Dean had shared countless times over the years. Dean was struck dumb. Seamus had never tried to actually hit him before. Not seriously.

"Seamus, what the fuck?"

"Don't you talk shit about me mam, Dean," Seamus all but shouted.

At any other moment, that phrase would have drawn Dean into an argument over the irrational defensiveness Seamus showed. It was aggressive. Horribly aggressive. Seamus was allowed to be defensive but surely not to the point of violence. Dean certainly wouldn't stand for that violence when it was directed at him.

Except that there was less anger in Seamus' tone and more… something else. Something sharp and edged that ached and warbled just a little. The longer Dean stared the more Seamus' anger faded seemed to slip, to fade and curl inwards until it had all but vanished completely. In its wake Seamus was left trembling, fists held before him seeming to grasp the air rather than stand ready for another punch. His glare had faded alongside it to be replaced by a shattered expression and – was that tears? They hadn't fallen but Dean was shocked to realise that they were definitely there.

Dean had never seen Seamus cry. Never. The countless times he'd injured himself in class with his many fiery explosions – of the actual fire variety – he'd more often than not laughed with delight or rolled his eyes at his own foolishness before being carted off to Pomfrey's. Dean hadn't seen the glimmer of a tear, not even at the end of the previous year when just about everyone, Dean included, had been on the verge of crying at the End of Year Feast. The black colours draped across the walls and the absence of Cedric Diggory in their midst had all but demanded it. Dean didn't think Seamus was heartless, but he hadn't cried. He hadn't even nearly cried.

But he was now. Or at least he was very close now. Standing there in his sloppy pyjamas, fists raised, he looked on the point of folding to his knees and sobbing. Dean didn't know what to make of it, let alone what to do about it.

"Seamus, what… what's wrong?"

Seamus did fold then. In a slide of feet on the rung, he slumped to the ground with legs sprawling in a mess and hands falling to his lap. Chin dropping, he very deliberately hid his face. His only reply to Dean's question was a broken sound that was almost a whimper.

Dean almost fell forwards in his haste. Disregarding any hesitancy he may have felt for nearly having his face smashed in by his best friend, he dropped to his knees before him. He forwards slightly in an attempt to catch a glimpse of his face. "Seam? Seamus, what's wrong? Did something happen that I don't…?"

Seamus sniffled and Dean was so startled by the sound that he was silenced. Helpless, staring, he could only wait as in nervous patience. He'd never had more difficulty being patient in his life.

Finally, head still bowed, Seamus spoke. The words were nearly inaudible. "Me mam – she found me and Wayne together." His voice hitched slightly. "When he came over for a visit in the summer, she walked in on us."

Dean frowned. Of all the replies he could possibly anticipate, that hadn't been one of them. He hadn't been expecting that at all. Something to do with Seamus' mum, certainly, but Wayne? What did Wayne have to do with anything?

Dean didn't know that Wayne had visited Seamus. He hadn't known they were _that_ close, but he could hardly think that such would be a problem. Wayne was a half-blood, so even if Mrs Finnigan had a problem with Muggleborns – which she didn't, because she hadn't batted an eyelid when she'd met Dean and had already up and married a Muggle as it was – it couldn't have been that.

Seamus continued after a moment, and as he did he gradually curled in upon himself. Drawing his legs towards his chest, he folded his arms across his knees and buried his face in the shadows between them. "Me mam – all of me mam's family – they're really old fashioned in a lot of ways. The Kavanaghs, they're the purebloods. Me Uncail Jack and Fergus and Dillon, like. They're really – they can be pretty…"

Sniffing so quietly Dean almost didn't hear him, Seamus took a long pause before continuing. "They're old-fashioned about a whole heap of things, actually. And I know, like, a lot of Muggles aren't all that different or anything, but about this…"

"About?" Dean prompted after another long pause.

"About… they think that, like, that when two boys – I mean, when a boy dates a b-boy, that it's… that it's…"

He trailed off but Dean hardly registered it. He rocked back in his seat slightly, blinking. Wait, so Seamus and Wayne had been…? Last year, when they'd been spending more and more time together, they'd actually been…?

Dean blinked once more and had to bite back a flicker of hurt. Why hadn't Seamus told him? If Dean ever started dating someone, Seamus would be the first person to hear about it. And Dean would have wanted to know – about Seamus, about Seamus and Wayne. About all of it. Those times Seamus had disappeared, only to reappear again a few hours later muttering something about "catching up with Wayne" would have made his touch of jealousy largely unfounded.

Why? Why hadn't Seamus told him?

It sunk in a moment later, however, as the rest of Seamus' words registered. His family was old-fashioned, he'd said. His family didn't like that sort of thing. Slowly, understanding dawned and a sinking feeling settled upon him. Dean himself had a very tolerant upbringing. His mum had always told him that people shouldn't be judged at face value, by the colour of their skin or the way they talked or their sexuality. The latter of which had only really made sense to Dean when he grew to the realisation that relationships weren't always so cut and dry as boy-meets-girl. It had been strange, briefly confusing, but Dean accepted it as he'd accepted everything else. It just became a different kind of normal.

But Seamus? Seamus had been brought up in a household that balanced on a tightrope between Muggle modernity and pureblood tradition. To hear that half of his family had disapproved of homosexuality entirely... Seamus had probably been taught that it was something bad, that it would be wrong for a boy to fancy another boy. And then to realise that it wasn't only an external 'bad' but impacted him on a personal level?

Dean bit back a groan and the urge to smack himself on the head as comprehension overwhelmed him again and again. If Seamus had started seeing Wayne last year, then he'd been faced with just that understanding with himself, with thoughts of his family, for months now. Possibly even for a whole year.

And Dean hadn't known.

Seamus hadn't told him, but he felt like he should have realised. That he should have known and been the first to tell Seamus that it was entirely okay to like boys, that it didn't change who he was as a person or how Dean saw him. That it certainly wasn't _bad_. Dean knew that many believed it was. Not only purebloods but many Muggles too. Others. Dean had long ago decided that he wasn't going to be like one of those others.

Before he could say anything, however, before he could blurt out his regrets, Seamus was speaking once more. The way he spoke was almost a babble, yet it was a twisted version of his usual talkativeness. It stung like a slap across Dean's face for the thinly veiled hysteria within those muttered words. "Me mam found out and she was furious. Absolutely off her rocker, like. She threw Wayne out and made me stay in me room for a whole week afterwards 'cause she said she didn't want to look at me. Heard the rest of me family found out and they were all – they all either ignored me or the fuckers like Fergus came up and gave me shit through the d-door. Didn't actually see anyone for a week, like, 'cause mam put a Charm on me door that stopped anyone coming in."

Seamus drew a ragged breath that was almost a gasp but didn't raise his head from where they'd dropped into the cradle of his arms. His words quavered, audibly warbling. "After that, when I was allowed out, me m-mam and me uncail mostly, like – they gave me this whole big lecture about how what I was doing was wrong. That they'd try to fix me and that I wasn't allowed to see Wayne again 'cause that would only make it worse. Fucking drilled me on how long I'd been thinking like that to work out what made it happen, like. It was fucking… it was fucking shit."

He shook his head into his arms, muttering something beneath his breath that Dean couldn't quite make out before continuing. "I was… actually sort of scar –" He cut himself off, a swallowing gulp sounding before he continued. "She scares me sometimes, like. Me mam. She's scary when she's angry. Fucking… I didn't want her to be angry with me, so I would –" Another pause, another swallow. "I just about did whatever she asked me to the whole summer. And she – Mam didn't believe Harry, you know? Thinks he's full of shit and all, like. Thinks Dumbledore's gone loony and… and I couldn't – it wasn't like I could say anything when she was just –"

Seamus broke of into another ragged gasp and his words stuttered to a halt. Dean felt the compulsive urge to reach out and touch his shoulder but for whatever reason couldn't bring himself to. Seamus wasn't quite crying – or Dean didn't think he was – and he wasn't quite trembling anymore, but a different kind of pain just as fierce had taken it's place.

And Dean… was at a loss. A horrified, stupefied loss.

He liked Mrs Finnigan. Dean really liked her, and he'd liked her a whole lot the summer he'd spent with his family in Ireland. But she was very strong-willed and clung to her opinions like glue. Seamus' words of earlier that night, flung in anger in his argument with Harry, rung forth once more. _"She'd weasel anything out of anyone_." Dean wondered how quickly she'd been able to draw everything out of Seamus.

He felt angry then. Shock seeped rapidly into anger and it was abrupt and overwhelming. Dean was _angry_ and just as much as he was pained – for Seamus, that his mum had been such a bitch when confronted by his sexuality. That she'd disapproved of it. By Seamus' dad, too, who Dean had also liked but got the impression was more than a little walked over by his mum. What about Eoghan? Dean knew Eoghan always stood by Seamus, that he doted upon him. He knew that Seamus practically idolised Eoghan in return. Where had he been when his mum had locked him in his fucking room for a week?

Dean wished that Seamus had told him. In letters if not otherwise, but certainly before that moment. It didn't matter that Dean's mum hadn't wanted him to visit the Kavanagh manor again, because even if she had been resistant she would have caved before the reality of what had happened. Of what had happened to Seamus. She would have most likely insisted upon coming too, if only to demand how Mrs Finnigan could do such a thing to her son.

Dean liked Seamus' mum, but he felt suddenly sick to the stomach at the thought of her and her family. She was… how could she have…? "Why didn't you tell me?" He asked, and his voice came out as little more than a whisper.

A sound even more like a whimper than that before sounded from Seamus' folded arms. "Because what if you'd hated me?" He mumbled.

That wasn't what Dean had meant. It wasn't what he'd meant at all. Certainly it was a surprise, for Dean hadn't guessed that Seamus was gay and he thought he knew his friend pretty well. He would have liked for Seamus to have told him. To have wanted to tell him.

But more than that, Dean wanted to know why Seamus hadn't told him what a horrible summer he was having. The distracted words of "Just doing stuff" and "Sick of homework" suddenly took on a double meaning.

It hurt that Seamus hadn't told him. It hurt deeply. But though Dean felt that pain and affront, even a touch of anger for Seamus' actions, he thrust them aside. Not now. He wouldn't confront them now and possibly not ever. Seamus needed him now, even if he didn't ask for it. Even if he didn't even realise it. Dean hadn't been there for him when he'd needed him most, hadn't realised what struggle he'd been going through the previous year either, but he would damn-well make up for it now.

He would. Seamus could count on that.

Scooting to Seamus' side, Dean didn't even hesitate to wrap his arms around him. He didn't know what to say that would convince Seamus that he wasn't hated. That Dean wasn't horrified as Seamus' family was. Not in the slightest. "Why the hell would I hate you?" he wanted to say, and "You're still my best mate. You always will be," but he didn't. Instead, he let the unyielding surety of his arms speak for him.

Seamus didn't say anything either. He didn't make a motion to return Dean's hug, nor even raise his head to look at him. It was because of that more than anything, the slight awkwardness of hugging someone who didn't reciprocate, that Dean realised this was the first time he'd ever hugged Seamus. The first time he'd ever been the one to hug him first.

 _Well, I'll just have to fix that, then_ , Dean thought, and didn't think any further. He just held Seamus all the tighter.

* * *

Bare weeks into the school term and Dean felt thoroughly exhausted. Everything, every little thing that could happen, did. And those little things piling atop of the big things… it just made it all the more exhausting.

There were OWLs and the heightened intensity of classes that resulted. There was the unexpected and entirely unwanted intrusion of Professor Umbridge who Dean was convinced was the devil incarnate herself dressed in a sickening shade of pink who seemed to delight in dominating her students while making their lives a living hell. Her classes were insufferable, and not only because they hadn't practiced any actual magic even once. She insulted everyone with pompous words and a muffled giggle, from their old professor Lupin – who Dean couldn't help but openly defend – to Harry himself.

Harry was another problem. Or something of a problem, anyway. It wasn't only because he seemed to be in a nearly constant bad mood that was only intensified by Umbridge and her objectionable personality. He seemed on edge at all times, and Dean swore he could feel the agitation seeping from him in an incessant trickle.

More than that, however, Harry and Seamus were still at odds.

Harry was angry with Seamus. Still angry to the point that he wouldn't look at Seamus, really look at him, without glaring. At first Seamus had been the same, returning the scowls with his own scowl and cold silence for cold silence. Dean didn't question why Seamus was angry anymore; it might not seem logical or rational to anyone else, but to Dean it made perfect sense. Seamus was tormented by what had happened over the summer and apparently the only way he could see it being set to rights was by agreeing entirely with the warped perspectives of his family. Of his mum. Dean couldn't try to convince him otherwise. It was the only thing Seamus could do for himself now.

It was a struggle, however. It was a struggle to listen on the occasions he heard Harry grumble about Seamus' 'idiocy' and his frustrations for the overall foolishness of those who didn't believe his claims of the previous year. Though Seamus never said it aloud, Dean knew he wasn't one of those idiots. Seamus didn't admit it but Dean knew – he knew Seamus believed Harry, despite the seemingly instinctive anger that arose when Harry spoke of his mum.

Seamus' anger was the first to flicker out. As it always was with Seamus, his rage burned brightly and fiercely before flickering out like a snubbed candle. An exhausted sort of melancholy seemed to settle upon him after that, and Dean hated it even more than the anger. Melancholic wasn't the kind of person Seamus was. He didn't lose himself in depressing thoughts or get weighed down by struggles he couldn't fix. That just wasn't him.

But Seamus was sad and just a little broken. No matter how uncharacteristic it was of him, he seemed as deflated and weary as a balloon that had lost its air yet still struggled to stay aloft. Dean didn't know what he could do to make it better, to make it all better. Even so, it became a vendetta he committed himself to as a top priority. Even if he wasn't of any real help, Dean simply ensured he stuck to Seamus at every possible moment he could. If nothing else, Dean would make sure that he would be there for his best friend, even if Seamus didn't feel he could talk to him about it.

He was glad for his commitment a week into the term when they'd taken themselves down to breakfast. It had taken those three days to grow comfortable with the schooling routine once more, and throughout that time Seamus had been as persistently angry as Dean had ever seen him. Not upset as he'd been on the first night but angry. Or at least he was until Dean found himself walking alongside him towards the Great Hall and noticed a very definite heaviness settled upon Seamus. His anger that was always as profound as a warmly radiating fireplace was gone.

Dean didn't voice his observations. He wasn't sure if doing so would just work Seamus into a rage once more or, worse, if it would push him once more down into the despair that he'd inflicted upon himself their first night back. But Dean looked and he noticed: Seamus looked heavy. Sluggish, and visibly weary. It was as though that anger, the frustration and the indignation that Seamus had directed towards Harry, had been all that was propping him upright. Now it appeared to have faded, as Dean had known it would, to be replaced by slumping exhaustion.

Dean had never seen Seamus like that before. He felt the urge to hug him once more, just as he'd done that first night, and it was a struggle to suppress the desire. Seamus was always the one who initiated casual contact and Dean wasn't altogether sure if he was allowed to. Was he supposed to wait for some particular signal that said Seamus would be okay with that? How did Seamus always know with Dean?

When they sat themselves at the Gryffindor table it was to the sound of raucous chatter and the gradually awakening students shovelling breakfast into their mouths with the fervour of a swarm of starving locusts. Or at least most of them were; the senior students, particularly the seventh years, seemed to be substantiating on coffee as a substitute for the less significantly caffeinated tea. Only a few days into term and they seemed to have been struck hard. Funny, that Dean had never noticed the abrupt strain on his seniors before. Next year it would be him.

Dean set about filling his own plate, sparing a nod to Hermione across the table as a standard greeting. Plucking two slices of toast from the toast rack, he held it in Seamus' direction in offering. "Seam?"

Seamus paused in pouring pumpkin juice for himself. "What?"

"Oh, I don't know. What could I be offering you a toast rack for?"

Seamus gave him a smile that Dean was heartened to see even if it was a shadow of his usual grin. He hadn't seen that grin as of yet that year and found he missed it. "Is there any marmalade?"

"You must be the only person in the entire school who eats that crap," Dean said with a smirk and a shake of his head. He didn't know what Hogwarts' chefs did with it but for some reason it was something else. Far too sharp.

"Oi, that's not true, like." Seamus gestured with the juice jug across the hall in the vague direction of Ravenclaw table before lowering it. "I saw that weird Ravenclaw girl eating it just yesterday."

"The weird one?"

"Blonde. Has those weird earrings."

"I think they're radishes."

"What the hell, like…"

Dean smiled as he dutifully reached for what must be the only pot of marmalade on the entire Gryffindor table and handed it to Seamus. For all of his apparent weariness, Seamus was in a better mood that day then he'd been thus far that year.

At least he seemed to be until Dean saw Wayne. Or more correctly, he felt Seamus hunch at his side before turning and slumping onto him, forehead dropping onto Dean's shoulder. It was surprising because until that moment Seamus seemed to have been deliberately avoiding making such casual touches that year. Everything, from the easy throwing of an arm around shoulders to his slouching against Dean on the couch as they wound down before the fireplace at night, had been absent. It was horrible in a way Dean had never anticipated such an absence would be because he suspected he knew the very reason such hesitancy. It hurt that such a reason would cause Seamus reluctance in treating him even as the friend he always had.

Dean glanced up from his breakfast, worry drawing a frown onto his face. The gesture was unexpected and thus concerning. "Seam? You alright?"

Seamus didn't reply, but he didn't have to, for Dean followed his sidelong glance to where Wayne had paused just across the table and a little along. He was an unobtrusive kind of boy, dark curly hair, dark-eyed and a manner of moving slowly as though he strove to pass unnoticed.

Dean noticed him, though. He noticed that Wayne had eyes only for Seamus, and as had been on the Hogwarts Express there wasn't anger or even hurt in his gaze. It was something else. Something softer, a little broken, a little _aching_. He looked as though he wanted to speak, even opened his mouth to do so, but seemed to reconsider at the last moment. With a duck of his head, Wayne stepped away from Gryffindor table relatively unnoticed and hastened from the Great Hall.

Seamus heaved an audible sigh into Dean's shoulder but didn't straighten. Dean was quite happy for him to remain where he was, certainly if it brought Seamus comfort, but he couldn't help asking. "Have you spoken to him about it?"

It was a tentative question, and Dean was almost worried that Seamus would grow angry, or defensive, or upset again which would be the worst out of the three possibilities. He didn't, however. He didn't do any of that but simply shook his head into Dean's shoulder. "Not since school started."

"Maybe you should? I mean, it's not my place to say anything or tell you what to do, but –"

"I don't want him to be angry with me," Seamus interrupted in a murmur.

Dean uttered a small laugh that wasn't in the last bit humorous. "Seam, this is Wayne. I don't think he's ever been angry with anyone in his entire life."

It was true. Wayne didn't seem angry, but more than that, Susan and Hannah who, from their knowing stares Dean suspected as being informed of the situation from Wayne's end, didn't either. Maybe it was the Hufflepuff in all of them, but they only appeared sad and sincerely regretful whenever they glanced in Seamus' direction. Almost always at Seamus, too, Dean noted. He hadn't spoken to any of them that year yet either. Strange, but in the circumstances he found himself Dean couldn't quite bring himself to be concerned for that fact.

Seamus didn't even attempt a half-hearted laugh of his own in reply. "Yeah. You're probably right. But he was upset enough the first time as it was."

"With your mum?" Dean asked, then bit his tongue for bringing up Mrs Finnigan at all.

Predictably, Seamus flinched slightly, and it hurt to see. It hurt even more because… because Dean truly had liked Mrs Finnigan. _Had_ , because no matter what, even if he'd wanted to, he couldn't bring himself to overlook the black smear upon her personality for what she'd done. For her beliefs, for the fact that she could hurt her own son so badly for something that was neither wrong nor in his control. Dean hated all of the Finnigans for just that, even if he didn't tell Seamus as much.

Seamus was shaking his head again, however, so Dean was forced to smother the rapidly boiling rage that had threatened to well within him as it had countless times the past few days. Dean wasn't an angry person but… "No. I mean when I went to see him, like."

Dean frowned, gaze dropping to the top of Seamus' head. "You went to see him? After -?"

"Yeah. When Eoghan came over, he said he was going to take me into the city for a trip and let me go see him."

Eoghan. Eoghan was the one shining beacon in the entire situation. Dean had initially been just as hateful of Seamus' older brother as he was of the rest of his family. Seamus idolised Eoghan, adored him, thought the world of him and as far as Dean had seen Eoghan felt the same. He'd been angry that Eoghan had so betrayed him as had his mum, his dad in his silence. But that anger had changed at a muttered word from Seamus. Apparently Eoghan had been caught up in work down in Wales for the first two weeks of Seamus' holidays so hadn't heard of the debacle. According to Seamus, he'd 'helped' him when he'd come back home.

Dean heard otherwise. Though Seamus truly said very little on the subject, there was more to it than that. Dean heard the relief behind Seamus' words when he spoke of Eoghan, when he mentioned that he was the person he spent the most time with over the summer. When he spoke of how Eoghan had been the one to take him to Diagon Alley and make a day trip out of it. Dean didn't know exactly if Eoghan was of a like-mind as his mum but he didn't think so. He certainly wasn't as spineless as Seamus' dad appeared to be either.

If Eoghan happened to appear in the doorway to the Great Hall at that very moment, Dean would have been across the room and engulfing him in gratitude for what he'd done, even if as far as he knew it could have been very little. Eoghan appeared to be the only one in the whole mess with a shred of decency.

Nodding slowly, accepting Seamus' explanation, Dean lowered his voice to afford them just a little privacy. "Are you alright? Did it go alright?"

Finally, Seamus lifted his head from Dean's shoulder. The expression he wore was just a little exasperated, though the hint of a smile touched his lips. "Why are you pussy-footing around this, Dean? Fucking hell, I'm not made of glass."

"I bloody well hope not with all the explosions you still seem incapable of avoiding," Dean said jokingly, referring with a touch of fondness to their Potions class the day before. Dean didn't know how he'd done it but somehow Seamus had managed to explode his cauldron. It was fairly typical of him, and Dean was already reaching automatically into his bag for the Burn Cream he'd religiously carried on him for years. More importantly than that, it was actually a benefit for the smile it brought to Seamus' face, the brief start of laughter. Seamus was like that; he would either be thoroughly vexed at his explosions or delighted. Apparently in that instance it was the latter.

Dean wondered if anyone else noticed the slightly hysterical edge to his grin.

The murmur of amusement Seamus uttered this time wasn't touched by hysteria. Thankfully in Dean's opinion, for he didn't know what he was supposed to do if it was. He wanted to help Seamus but simply didn't know how. Each moment he saw Seamus struggle without support for Dean's incompetence, the weight of his helplessness settled more firmly upon him. Seamus didn't seem to mind, however. He never asked Dean for anything, and had even begun speakingin halting words. Slowly, gradually, Seamus spoke about his summer, about what had happened, and though it obviously hurt him to speak just as much as it pained Dean to hear, he seemed relieved to tell Dean. It was as though Seamus had been holding it all back. When he let it all loose with the babble Dean knew him for so well was relieving. Most of the time Dean just listened.

As he did then as Seamus continued. "Whatever. Not fragile, like, but whatever." He sniffed, scrubbed a hand through his hair before sighing heavily. "Yeah, so, I went and saw Wayne. Told him what had happened and that me mam and me uncail and all were real pissed off about everything and that I didn't think we could… you know." Dean nodded, allowing that Seamus didn't feel comfortable with voicing the blatant truth. He was just happy that Seamus spoke to him at all. "He didn't like it, but Wayne isn't the sort of person to be assertive when someone else is insistent, like, yeah?"

Dean nodded once more. He could see that of Wayne, just as he'd seen the hesitancy and resulting reluctance in him when he'd hastened from the Gryffindor table moments before. Wayne was a terribly kind person, and likely to his own detriment at times, but that kindness left him a little hesitant sometimes. Dean wouldn't go so far as to call him weak-willed but…

"Anyways," Seamus continued, "I wrote him a couple of times just to make sure he was okay. To apologise for what happened and all, but, um… but me Aintín Sara saw me get one of his letters one day and she got real suspicious, like. So I just… I told him not to write anymore." Seamus shrugged in an almost nonchalant fashion. "Don't think it'd be right to, like, get back together or anything."

Dean heard the unspoken words. He didn't think himself a terribly perceptive person but he knew Seamus and he heard it despite his quietly casual tone. He heard the pain that arose for his aunt's suspicion, at what it meant that they were so rigid with even his correspondences, and it sparked that anger within Dean once more that he struggled to clamp down upon. He heard the touch of fear in Seamus' words too, the fear alongside the sincerity of his consideration that it "wouldn't be right" to get back with Wayne. Dean didn't know what Seamus had gone through, didn't know what particular struggles he'd faced in dating Wayne in the first place when he'd so likely been subjected to an instinctive aversion to his sexuality, but his self-disgust and reluctance made itself known at his words.

Dean wished he could face each and every one of the Finnigans in that moment and give the greatest tongue lashing of his life. Or at least everyone but Eoghan. It was infuriating and simultaneously painful to see Seamus so cowed in the face of his family, a family that so disdained who and what he was and that he still struggled to please nonetheless. They were his _family,_ and Dean knew Seamus would be heartbroken for what they'd done.

Dean didn't consider himself a very loud or aggressive person, and beside the occasional tussle with Seamus that was more playful than sincere, he didn't really engage in physical fights. But he was almost inclined to as that understanding settled upon him. Almost and likely would if –

"Probably for the best, like," Seamus said, exhaling loudly. He glanced towards Dean and offered a shrug that Dean suspected wasn't as carefree as he made it look. "It's just – it's easier not to think about that right now, like. It's not as if I have to or anything, and with out OWLs coming up and all…"

For all of his words, Seamus only looked further wearied by them. Dean watched as he prodded at the congealing marmalade that smeared his remaining slice of toast. They didn't speak further on the subject.

Dean would like to think that Seamus was getting better. He would, and for all appearances Seamus did appear to be less aggravated than he had been. His anger seemed to ease further with each passing day, and though he and Harry didn't speak to one another there wasn't any open aggression between them anymore. That was something at least, and it made Dean's own brief conversations with Harry less awkward. Seamus was even smiling more as the weeks progressed, his good humour returning in dribs and drabs.

Even so, Dean wondered if he was the only one who saw the moments when Seamus seemed to lose himself in thought. His would grow blank and glassy-eyed, and for more often than not a finger or two would find its way to his mouth for his nails to be gnawed to splinters. It was moments like those that Dean missed the company of the Hufflepuffs; he didn't know what to say, what words of comfort to offer, and was sure that Susan or Hannah, or even Wayne despite the awkwardness of the circumstances, would be better equipped.

Dean hadn't realised how much time they'd been spending together the previous year until they were distinctly apart. He regretted that just a little. Still, Seamus was his priority. He always would be. Watching him sidelong as he contemplated the disgusting mess of marmalade that was his breakfast, Dean was only reminded of that fact once more.

The third weekend of the school year had Dean waking up late on Saturday morning to a mostly-empty dormitory. Seamus was, typically, absent. His unshakeable habit of waking at seven o'clock on the dot every day hadn't abated over the years even when most people – most practical and sane people, in Dean's opinion – clung to any bed rest they could get. Surprisingly, Harry had disappeared too, and Neville was in the process of tending his cactus-thing that he'd brought with him to school that year. Dean couldn't bring himself to try and remember what it was called, and he'd never claimed to be a Herbologist. _Mimbulus_ -something-or-other. Dean spared him a moment to exchange a word of plant-related conversation that didn't make a lick of sense to him before leavin the dorm.

Yawning and scrubbing his eyes to wake himself up as he stepped into the common room, Dean considered. He had homework to do, of course, but that could wait. It was hardly urgent, and given that his primary homework was for Umbridge and hence as boring as all hell, he was disinclined to throw himself into it. Breakfast? Then maybe some flying? Dean supposed he could go in search of Seamus somewhere, but he wasn't sure if he should intrude upon any self-imposed privacy Seamus might have sought. He'd already done just that on several occasions, though not quite absenting himself entirely. Dean had found him simply sitting on his bed several times with the curtains half-drawn in a clear indication of intended isolation, lost in thought. Each time Dean wanted to ask if he was alright, if he could help somehow, despite the awkwardness of such a question.

He hadn't asked. It hadn't felt… right.

Half an hour later, Dean was making his way down towards the quidditch pitch, hands in pockets and breathing sharply of the cool air. It wasn't quite cold just yet, but winter wouldn't be far off. It never was long in coming to Hogwarts.

Strolling as he was, gaze drawn to a pair of second years that were arguing about the rules of 'second years being allowed to fly' just outside of the broom shed, Dean didn't notice Seamus and Wayne until he almost stepped inside the shed. As he did, he paused and couldn't help but stair.

They weren't far away. Just on the edge of the Forbidden Forest, they would have been all but invisible to anyone who didn't notice the flicker of movement and the brief flash of Wayne yellow scarf looped loosely and redundantly around his neck. Dean didn't mean to stare, but he was surprised; he'd thought Seamus was reluctant to talk to Wayne but… apparently not. Or maybe his guilt for practically ignoring Wayne, the guilt that he didn't voice yet Dean heard tell of anyway, had finally gotten the better of him. Seamus had never been one to hold back, to bite his tongue in silence. It was what made his most recent pensiveness so uncharacteristic of him.

They appeared in deep conversation. As Dean watched, unable to look away, they paused in their strolling step and Seamus turned more fully towards Wayne so that Dean could only see the back of his head. He saw Wayne's face, however, saw that same, persisting sadness that he'd observed numerous times before and something more. Something… soft. Something perhaps even a little adoring.

It was a strange to see, Dean realised detachedly, and not because they were both boys. Not because they stood so close together that there was no denying to any onlooker who actually took the time to look that they were more than just physically close. Wayne was a good half a head taller than Seamus – most of the boys in their year were – and he seemed to bow his head towards him as though to lessen the space even a little more. And Seamus wasn't pulling away. He was clearly still speaking, allowing them to stand in proximity. It was a strange combination of tension and ease that settled upon them, as though they _were_ comfortable with one another but the conversation itself was strained. When Dean considered, it probably that exactly.

The exchange of the two second years behind Dean faded as he saw Wayne raise a hand. As he watched that hand, unable to look away. It was just a brief gesture, wouldn't have been noticeable had Dean not been watching so closely, but it couldn't be mistaken. So briefly yet so gently, Wayne brushed a hand along the side of Seamus' head, grazing his fingers through his hair before resting his hand on the back of his head. It was such an intimate gesture, so plain and simple yet _intimate_ , that Dean had to look away. He looked so far away that he was already turning and starting away from the broom shed before he realised what he was doing.

It was strange, and not just for what Dean had seen. So strange, because while something like relief rose within him – that Seamus had talked to Wayne, that they were apparently on speaking terms – a tightness curled in his gut. It took the entire walk back to the castle for Dean to discern what it was.

Unexpected. It was an unexpected thing to have seen, because Dean had never seen Seamus so close to anyone else before. If Seamus was leaning against someone, animatedly chattering someone's ear off, slinging an arm around someone's shoulders, that person was Dean. It had always been Dean, because they were best friends and by far the closest of friends to one another. Even when considering the growing friendship that had sprung between them both and the Hufflepuffs, it had always been Dean and Seamus.

When Dean thought about it, he knew he should have expected it. It was only natural that Seamus – or Dean himself – would start dating at some point. That point was one in which their companionship would be divided or impinged upon by whatever girlfriend or boyfriend might arise. Dean knew that now, yet it was still flooring to consider. Even more flooring to think that, however unconsciously… Dean loved being Seamus' best friend. He loved being the person at school that Seamus liked the most.

Given the circumstances, it was likely cruel of him to think as much. Seamus was being dragged over endlessly rocky terrain, and that he was making up with Wayne even a little bit should have made Dean happy. Yet as he started back up to the Gryffindor common room with the sulking thought that doing Umbridge's homework would suit his mood perfectly, Dean couldn't help but regret it just a little bit.


	8. Chapter 8 - Fifth Year - Part II

A/N: I hope you enjoy the chapter, lovely readers. I just wanted to say an especially big thanks to **oh help** for your review this last chapter. Thank you so much for your support. It means so, so much. It was very lovely of you!

* * *

 **Chapter 8: Fifth Year - Part II**

Dean was practically buzzing as he waited for his turn to leave the Hog's Head. He wasn't the only one, either; those that remained, those that hadn't already left in small groups of twos and threes so as not to look 'suspicious', seemed just as excited as he was.

At first, he'd been dubious. Dean could see on the faces of those around him that he hadn't been the only one for that either. The Hog's Head wasn't exactly an up-and-coming bar; it was old, run down and dank, generally hosting the less respectable clientele that might happen across Hogsmeade. The bartender himself seemed nothing if not horrified by the appearance of so many of them – or perhaps of students in general – and Dean had noticed him staring at them fixedly on more than one occasion.

It was weird. And kind of creepy.

Except that such dankness and creepiness didn't deter their motley crew. It was exciting. It was invigorating. Dean couldn't help but stare at his housemates and friends, at Harry and Ron and Hermione, people he'd known for years, as they incited further eagerness into those that were already enchanted. Harry in particular, through his awkwardness and humble almost offhandedness for the actions of his past, only made the stories and the possibility of what he was willing to teach that much more thrilling. Dean had already known bits and pieces of what he'd done, but hearing him say it as he had… that was something else.

It was just a shame that Dean had to come by himself. He wished… but no. Seamus wouldn't. He almost couldn't. Not yet and maybe not ever. He was getting better, less distant and more like himself, but apologising to Harry? Dean didn't think such a thing was exactly on the cards just yet.

When it was Dean's turn to leave the Hog's Head, he was hardly even aware of who walked just behind him at first. He was too caught up in his own thoughts – of what this new group would bring, of the excitement elicited from undermining Umbridge, and the possibilities vaguely hinted at. It was only when Susan actually spoke to him that he thought to glance her way.

"Hey, Dean."

Pausing in step, Dean glanced towards her over his shoulder. It was cold, and though he'd noticed she and Hannah both in the Hog's Head, he considered it was likely the hats pulled low across their foreheads and their thick wrappings of scarves that had made him so oblivious to their identity. Winter was rapidly encroaching, the promise of snow darkening the horizon and chilling the touch of a breeze. Dean didn't fancy staying outside in its threatening cold for any longer than he had to, but he paused in step until Susan and Hannah both fell in alongside him. "Hey, Susan. Hannah."

Dean was maybe just a little awkward. Just a little. It had been far too long since they'd spoken. They'd barely exchanged even a single word since the beginning of the year. From anyone else, as they fell in alongside one another, that awkwardness and the awareness of their unspoken agreement to distance themselves from one another, would have only grown with every step. Except it didn't. Not with them. Not Hannah, and certainly not Susan.

"So, this is pretty exciting, isn't it?" Susan said brightly, grinning widely at Dean.

Despite himself, Dean couldn't help but reply in kind. "Honestly, I'll just be happy to be learning some defence other than that crap in the books Umbridge has us reading."

Both girls nodded in fervent agreement. Hannah's eyes were as wide – or still as wide, more correctly – as they had been since the Hog's Head. Dean had noticed. She looked nothing if not in awe of Harry the tales of his fights and accomplishments had been thrown around. Dean had to admit, he was of a like mind with her; they did sound pretty impressive.

Taking themselves from the beaten, winding track leading up to the Hog's Head where it perched distinctly aside from the rest of Hogsmeade, Hannah leapt into avid speak of just that nature. Just like that. Just as easily as that, and Dean found himself utterly relieved that they fell into companionable conversation. Nothing overly deep, but even he found himself expressing excitement for what was to come. Hannah was all but shaking with the thought of being able to practice mass-defensive charms because, "I've never been much good with _Protego_ Charms" while Susan seemed to be hung on the idea of learning how to cast a Patronus Charm.

"I've wanted to learn for years," she said, "but after last summer break and what my aunt said about Harry with _his_ Patronus…" Shaking her head she beamed at Dean. It was impossible not to smile in return to Susan's very definite enthusiasm. "It's exciting, isn't it?"

Dean nodded. "Learning something other than a Tripping Hex? Sure is."

"Have you ever seen Harry produce a corporeal Patronus before?" Susan asked.

Dean frowned, drawing his gaze sideways as he wracked his thoughts for a moment. He'd definitely seen Harry cast a Patronus before, but then most of the school had in their third year. Had he seen an actual shape in that Patronus? "I don't think so. I think I'd remember something like that."

"They're supposed to be very beautiful," Hannah said with a sigh.

"Useful is beautiful," Susan said.

Hannah huffed, and shot an indignant little frown towards Susan. Not that frowns ever looked particularly intimidating when worn by Hannah. "That's not what I meant."

"I know."

"I meant how they looked, and what they embody."

"I know that too."

"What they embody?" Dean asked curiously.

Hannah leaned past Susan to offer him a bright smile and a nod. "Yeah, they're sort of like a guardian angel, aren't they?"

"A spirit animal thing," Susan added.

"Spirit animal?"

"They embody your inner self," Hannah said. "Or something."

"I thought that was the Animagus form," Dean said.

Susan and Hannah exchanged a glance. "Oh yeah," Hannah murmured. "Wait, wasn't that…?"

"Is it maybe both?" Susan suggested.

"So then your Patronus and your Animagus form would be the same?"

"Is that how it works?"

"I don't know, is it?"

Dean glanced back and forth between the two of them, and despite the superficial nature of their conversation he couldn't help but smile to himself. He'd missed this. He'd missed _them_. They hadn't had any sort of fight to tear down their friendship, but the situation with Seamus and Wayne had put an end to what they'd had. It was Seamus who had drawn them together as friends in the first place and Seamus who had always been closer to Hufflepuffs than Dean had. It would have been strange, a betrayal even, had Dean continued that friendship when something had clearly gone wrong. Wouldn't it?

Except that now Seamus and Wayne seemed to be on speaking terms. Or more than speaking terms, Dean thought, as the memory of them leaning into one another, of Wayne touching Seamus' face just slightly, rose once more. He had to bite back on the touch of jealousy that arose each time he did recall it; how stupid, that he'd be jealous of his best friend getting a boyfriend. How unfair, too. It wasn't right to think like that. It wasn't fair to Seamus, especially with everything else going on.

Thrusting the thought aside as they crossed the last of the expanse of road to Hogsmeade proper, Dean turned back to the girls as they chatted at his side once more. Maybe this was alright? Maybe they could go back to being friends too? He really had missed their company.

As they paused in step at the beginning of the road, Susan turned towards him. She seemed to think over her words for a moment, but Susan was never one to ponder too deeply or consider for too long. "Did you want to come to Honeyduke's with us, Dean? If you haven't got anything else to do at the moment, that is."

Dean felt himself warm at the suggestion. Yes, maybe they could be friends. "Why, Susan, I didn't know you had such a sweet tooth."

"Me? Sweet?" Susan pulled horrified expression before it broke into a grin. "Of course not. No, this is for Hannah. She's the one that thrives on sugar."

"Hey!" Hannah protested, but it was with a laugh.

"And Wayne, for that matter," Susan continued, sharing a smile with Hannah before turning back to Dean. "He told me to pick him up some Crackles."

"He didn't 'tell you to', Susan," Hannah said. "He asked you. And very politely at that, and only because he knew we were going anyway."

"I'm not begrudging him," Susan said. "I don't mind getting him something when he's not coming down himself."

"He wasn't interested in the meeting?" Dean asked. He deliberately kept his mention of the Hog's Head vague. They knew what they were doing could get them all in a lot of trouble.

Susan and Hannah both regarded him silently for a moment and Dean was given the impression that they were studying him for a response that he couldn't quite discern. Reading him, as though gauging how much he knew. "He… didn't want to," Hannah said quietly. "Not yet, anyway."

"Not yet?" Dean asked.

This time, Susan and Hannah exchanged a glance before turning back to Dean. Susan was the one who spoke. "I think he feels like he'd be undermining his friendship with Seamus a little bit by doing it."

Dean stared at Susan as the words slowly sunk in. Or, more correctly, as the deeper meaning behind them slowly made itself known. Undermining Seamus? So did that mean they were still…? Dean had to smother the urge to frown. It sounded wrong when Susan said it that way. More than that, it made Dean feel like what he'd done was wrong, as though _he'd_ been betraying his friendship.

Dean didn't like that. He didn't like what those words, likely not even intended to reflect upon him, insinuated. Even less because he'd spoken to Seamus about it.

 _"It would be really cool to go, like," Seamus sighed a little heavily. "I bet Harry has a whole heap of knowledge that would be useful and all."_

 _Dean watched him silently, intently, as Seamus plucked at the cuffs of his sleeves. He knew what was going through his mind, even if Seamus didn't – and likely never would – expressly tell him. That the wished he wasn't fighting with Harry. That he_ did _believe him but that he couldn't admit it. Not now. Not with everything else that was going on. To someone else, maybe even to Harry, his personal trials might seem to pale before the wave of a looming war and belief in the return of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, but it didn't. Not to Seamus, and not to Dean who had seen what his friend was putting himself through._

 _He just wished he'd stop. For his own sake, though, not for anyone else's. Certainly not for Dean's, though he'd be eternally grateful if Seamus could haul himself past his personal dilemma. He hated seeing him so melancholic._

 _"Yeah, it would be," Dean found himself saying. "Even though he's not fantastic at any of our other classes, I think he's probably topped Defence every year since, what, third year?"_

 _"Probably since first," Seamus said with a small smile to his feet. "Reckon Harry's just got that innate ability, you know?"_

 _Dean nodded, then couldn't help but smirk. "What about second year with Lockhart? I don't think even he'd stand a chance in that class."_

 _Seamus had actually laughed at that, and Dean congratulated himself that he'd managed to induce it. Seamus hadn't laughed all that much of late, which was unusual for someone as bright and bubbly as he usually was, but he was getting there. He was getting better._

 _Seamus sobered a moment later, however, as he raised his gaze to Dean. "Are you going to go?"_

 _Pressing his lips together, Dean shook his head. He might have wanted to, but he wouldn't. Not without Seamus. "No. I don't think so."_

 _"Why not?"_

 _"Well, it'd be weird going by myself."_

 _Seamus stared at him for a little longer, frowning. "I think Neville said he was going, actually."_

 _Dean sighed. Seamus was either being deliberately obtuse or particularly slow that day._ _"I don't want to go without you, idiot."_

 _Seamus stared at Dean at that, blinking as though he really hadn't expected him to say such a thing. Then, with a slightly rueful smile, he punched him in the shoulder. It was more affectionate that annoyed or aggressive. "That's not a reason, like. You should just go."_

 _"Maybe I don't want to."_

 _"Bullshit."_

 _Dean chuckled. "Yeah. Pretty much."_

 _"Just go," Seamus told him, butting his fist into Dean's shoulder again. "You can tell me what it's all about, yeah?"_

Dean decided to make good that suggestion. First of all, he really had wanted to go, to see what it was all about, to undermine Umbridge if nothing else. But knowing he would be attending for Seamus too just made him want to come all the more. He'd set himself that commitment firmly enough.

Hearing what Susan had said about Wayne's perspective on the matter annoyed Dean just a little bit. He liked Wayne and knew him for being a top bloke for more than the fact that he trusted in Seamus' taste in friends – and boyfriends, as the case may be. But this was annoying. Did Wayne even know why Seamus was fighting with Harry?

Selfishly, and a little stupidly, Dean found himself hoping that Wayne didn't know. Horrible as it had been, it felt a little nice knowing that Seamus had confided in him, perhaps before anyone else. If Seamus was going to date Wayne – again? – he at least wanted to have a little something that was just shared between the two of them. It _was_ selfish, and Dean shuddered to think what his mum would think of him behaving in such a manner, but Dean was realistic enough to acknowledge the desire for what it was.

"So will you?"

Susan's words shook Dean from his thoughts. "What?"

"Come to Honeyduke's with us," Hannah clarified. She sniffled slightly, wiping at the reddening tip of her nose.

Dean shrugged then shook his head. "No, I'm okay. Thanks anyway. I think I'm just going to head back up to school. It's kind of getting cold."

"That sounds like a good idea," Hannah said with a nod. "I wonder if there'll be hot chocolate in the hall?"

"Only at the Hufflepuff table, I'll wager," Susan said with an impish grin.

"I knew you Hufflepuffs got unfair advantages," Dean muttered, shaking his head.

Susan's grin widened. "It's all a part and parcel of our Basement being practically on top of the kitchens."

"They're what?" Dean asked curiously. Susan only tapped her nose conspiratorially.

As Dean turned to leave, Hannah called with a parting word, "Say hi to Seamus for us."

Glancing over his shoulder, Dean paused in step. He frowned slightly, considering. "Are you… still not speaking to each other?"

Hannah's expression grew regretful and Susan wore a slight frown, but both of them shook their heads in disagreement. "It's not that," Hannah said. "It's just that it's a little awkward."

"I don't think Seamus feels comfortable talking to us," Susan said. "After what happened with Wayne and all over the summer…"

Trailing off, she shared another glance with Hannah. Dean switched his gaze between the two of them. _Am I the only one who didn't know?_ He wanted to ask, but found different words entirely spilling from his mouth. "But they're alright now, aren't they? I thought they were alright."

The girls glanced his way, and their sombre expressions brightened. Just like that. It was so typically Hufflepuff of them. "Yeah, they are," Hannah said. "A little better, at least. I hope they've worked out their differences."

"Wayne didn't tell you?" Dean couldn't help but ask. To his ears, he sounded faintly accusing, and had to bite back on the flicker of annoyance that rose within him once more. What was wrong with him?

For perhaps the first time Dean could recall, Hannah smirked almost a little teasingly in an expression nearly identical to the one Susan wore. "Of course not," Susan said. "And we'd have to be a pair of nosy little cretins to ask him for the details of his love life." Then they chuckled to themselves as though the thought was entirely amusing.

Dean was still thinking about them halfway back up to the school. Trudging along the damp path, eyes on his feet and hands stuffed in his pockets, he heard the words again and again and could help but think about them more deeply. About what they insinuated. If Susan and Hannah had known that Seamus and Wayne were seeing one another the previous year, was it possible that they also knew more than Dean did now? Had Seamus and Wayne really gotten back together and Dean didn't know about it?

Dean didn't ask Seamus about anything that happened. He hadn't questioned him on what he'd seen of Seamus and Wayne at the pitch, though it had played on his mind countless times. He acknowledged that to Seamus, the subject was private and difficult to discuss, that it was something he was struggling to come to terms with in uncharacteristic silence. For the first time Dean had known him, he didn't seem to want to talk about it. Given that it was such an anomaly, Dean respected that.

But even so, Dean couldn't help but want to know. Not because he considered himself 'nosy' as Susan and Hannah had put it, but because he wanted to help his friend. If something was upsetting Seamus, if something was hard for him or was a struggle to wade through, Dean wanted to know about it so he could offer him a hand. So that he could offer any kind of help that Seamus could possibly need.

Why hadn't Seamus told him if he and Wayne had gotten back together?

Dean was so caught up in his thoughts that he didn't realise his name was being called until the caller's crunching steps drew towards him. Blinking down at her, Dean met Ginny's eyes as she puffed and slowed to fall into step alongside him. "I thought you might have had ear mufflers on you were so deaf to my calling," she said with a grin.

Giving himself a mental shake of his head, Dean returned the smile. He didn't know Ginny particularly well given that younger years didn't tend to mix with their elders all that much, but as Ron's sister he knew her better than most of his juniors. She was pretty cool, for that matter. Smart and with a pretty decent sense of humour, she had a good head on her shoulders and lacked the touch of cowed respect many of the the younger students held for their elders. She was pretty too, Dean considered as he glanced at her sidelong, her thick red hair poking out from beneath her beanie and pale skin smattered with a thick dusting of freckles. He thought she might have even had more than Ron did.

"Do you mind if I walk with you?" Ginny asked, walking sidelong for several steps so she could face him.

Dean shrugged. "Yeah, sure. You're not staying down in Hogsmeade?"

Ginny pulled a face and shook her head. "My friends are going on a spending spree. It's not nearly as fun when you don't have the money to participate in it with them."

Nodding, Dean shared another smile with her. His family wasn't poor, but his mum believed in everyone at least making an attempt to earn their own way rather than having it handed to them. He was afforded his share of pocket money for necessities, but it was far from extravagant. Not nearly so much as what Seamus had – although for whatever reason Seamus wasn't quite as carefree with his money as Dean would expect from someone with the sheer amount his family had. It was almost as though he didn't really care for spending at all.

"So what do you think about it?" Ginny said, breaking into his thoughts for the second time.

Dean glanced towards her again. "About what?"

Ginny widened her eyes meaningfully. "About… you know."

For a moment, Dean drew a blank. Then it dawned upon him. Had he honestly forgotten about the meeting at the Hog's Head? How had he been so distracted by his thoughts? "Oh. Yeah."

"'Oh yeah'," Ginny mimicked in an eerily identical tone before grinning widely. "Didn't make much of an impact on you, I take it?"

Snorting, Dean shook his head. "Are you kidding? I think it's fantastic."

Ginny beamed. "I know, right? Personally, just the thought of trouncing Umbridge is good enough incentive for me."

"Tell me about it. You know yesterday we spent the entire class just sitting their reading our textbooks?"

"You think that's bad? _We_ spent our entire lesson on Thrusday _writing_ from our textbooks."

They dissolved into giggles, amusement fuelled mostly if not entire by the prospect of what they were doing. What they were to be a part of. Dean couldn't believe he'd temporarily forgotten about it; it _was_ exciting.

"I was surprised to see you there, though," Ginny said after she'd composed herself.

Gaze having drawn up towards the slowly approaching school as they wound their way up the hill, Dean turned back towards her. "What? Why?"

Ginny shrugged. "Just because I didn't think you'd go considering the spat Seamus and Harry are having. Might be, I don't know, conflicting loyalties or something."

Dean didn't say anything to that, but he felt his merriment wane with Ginny's words. They echoed Susan's just a little too closely, if in a somewhat different manner. The memory of "betrayal" rose in his mind once more.

Despite his absence of reply, Ginny continued as though he'd encouraged her to. "It must be a bit awkward, is it? Being in the same dormitory with them both. I mean, I know you're Seamus' friend and everything but…" Ginny paused, peering at him sidelong. "Don't you think he's being a bit of a prat about this?"

It was all Dean could do to withhold the urge to snap at Ginny. He was abruptly furious, because what did Ginny know? Nothing, that's what. She and just about everyone else was ignorant as to the reality of Seamus' situation and why he acted as he had. As he did. It wasn't his fault; he was just desperate.

Not for the first time, Dean felt a tide of overwhelmingly protectiveness for Seamus rise within him. His voice was far colder than he'd intended when he spoke in reply. "Actually, there's a whole lot that you don't know anything about, Ginny. Maybe you shouldn't just make assumptions as to who's being the 'prat' before you know what's going on."

Ginny stared at him with abruptly wide eyes. She wasn't angry but rather appeared… stunned. Dean didn't really care. He didn't care if he'd upset her, because she'd upset him first. Honestly, did she really think he'd agree with her when she was insulting Seamus?

The rest of the trip back to Hogwarts was made in silence. Dean found he didn't mind.

* * *

It looked ugly. When Dean turned it slightly the sketch improved marginally, made it seem less overt in its ugliness, but yes, it was still ugly.

Considering mermaids were, in Dean's opinion, fairly terrifying and ugly creatures as they were – not the beautiful half-human, half-fish creatures from the Little Mermaid as his sister June had been convinced existed for the first ten years of her life – he thought it was a pretty accurate depiction. All in all, for a doodle that he hadn't even known the nature of until halfway through the drawing, Dean was satisfied with himself.

His sketchbook was filled with magical creatures, scenes from around Hogwarts and ten-minute portraits of his friends as he'd lazed around the common room in procrastination from studying. Or, more recently, as he'd ignored Umbridge's lecturing and ridiculous spouting to turn his attention to something that, while not exactly educational, was certainly far more constructive. His oldest sister Millie would be so proud of him spending more time drawing; she was a bona fide prodigal artist herself and loved to think her siblings would follow in her footsteps.

Twisting his sketchbook back around again, Dean fidgeted slightly where he was sprawled against the foot of the couch before the fireplace. Thought not quite a proper seat, it was in prime position given that winter had very definitely set its teeth in and, despite the Warming Charms threaded through the walls, Gryffindor Tower was draughty. Most of the house was huddled in the common room as though gravitating to greater numbers to preserve that warmth, despite it being barely seven o'clock that night. Similarly, most seemed of a like mind to Dean; he could see only three people with their textbooks out and one of them was Hermione across the room so that didn't count.

Seamus was off sending a letter. Apparently a spur of the moment decision that afternoon had him longing to write in reply to his brother when he'd been so hesitant only that morning. When Charms had finished up that afternoon, Seamus had, with a tell tale lightness of his words, asked Dean if he fancied taking a trip up to the Owlery.

Dean was Seamus' best friend, but there were some things he wouldn't do.

"Are you serious?"

Seamus pouted. "What, are you, like, going to make me go myself?"

On their way down to dinner as they were, Dean stopped alongside one of the windows. He gestured with a thumb. "Seam, it's bloody snowing."

Seamus' pout became more pronounced. Dean knew him far too well to think his discontent genuine. He was trying to manipulate Dean into coming with him. Dean didn't mind so much. If anything it satisfied him, because it was typical behaviour of the Seamus he'd been friends with for years. That familiarity was comforting.

"We'll run through the snow, then," Seamus suggested.

"Hell no, I'm not going for a run in the snow."

" _Through_ the snow, like. Just to get to the Owlery."

"No."

"Hey, Dean –"

"No. I'm not going outside. It's cold."

"Well duh, it's winter. I've just really got to –"

"Seamus." Dean clapped a hand to his shoulder, biting back the urge to smirk. "I'm. Not. Going. If you want to freeze your arse off so badly, go and do it yourself."

Seamus left him after dinner with a bellowed, "I can't believe you're abandoning me!" over his shoulder and Dean had taken himself back to the Gryffindor common room. Thus his current circumstances. He didn't need to sketch a mermaid, but they'd been revising third-year content in their Defence textbooks that week and the urge had niggled at him.

"What are you drawing?"

At the sound of Ginny's voice, Dean glanced over his shoulder. She was kneeling on the couch behind him, peering over his head at his sketchbook curiously. Funny. He hadn't even heard her approach.

Dean and Ginny had developed a sort of camaraderie these days. Though the day of their Hog's Head meeting they'd had something of an argument, Ginny seemed to take the reprimand on her chin and move on from that. She was good like that. Not once since had she badmouthed or frowned at Seamus sidelong, even if Dean suspected she still thought as she had before. Seamus and Harry… they still hadn't exactly made up.

Since, however, Dean and Ginny had become companionable. Harry's makeshift Defence lessons in the Room of Requirement, the meetings of 'Dumbledore's Army' as they'd named themselves – a little pompously in Dean's opinion, though he couldn't help but grin when they'd made their decision – had thrown them together. Dean lacking Seamus' company as his usual companion and Ginny's two friends usually partnering with one another left them both at odds and resulted in them unconsciously partnering up themselves. After the first time, Dean just came to accept and even expect that he and Ginny were going to work together.

Dean glanced back towards his sketch and tipped the page slightly in the way that made it look just slightly better. "A mermaid," he said, if perhaps a little redundantly as he considered it looked very much like one now.

Ginny tipped her head as she looked at it, leaning further over his shoulder to get a better look. "Wow," she muttered. "You're a really good drawer."

"Thanks," Dean said with a smile. "Not that good though, I don't think. You should see what my little sister does. _She's_ really good."

"Just because she's great doesn't mean you aren't too," Ginny said.

"I know." Dean shrugged. "She's just better."

"She must be brilliant, then."

Dean flashed Ginny a smile over his shoulder once more before touching pencil back to paper. He'd found he liked her company much of the time. Quite a lot, in fact, and quite unexpectedly because, though friends with Ron he was, they'd never been particularly close.

She was always ready with compliments too, a smile or congratulatory clap on the shoulder in support of attempts in their DA meetings. Ginny was just that kind of nice person – loud, cheerful and bright, she was kind to just about everyone while somehow making each and every person she talked to feel just a little special.

"Do you draw much, then?" Ginny asked. She propped her elbow on the arm of the couch, chin dropping to the heel of her palm. "I've seen you doing it every now and then."

"Since I was a kid, actually," Dean said, adding a tangle of weed beneath the low-swimming mermaid. "I like it. It's kind of calming."

"Some people just have the talent," Ginny said a little cheekily.

"Some people just bother to practice, you mean."

"It takes a certain amount of talent, too."

"Maybe. More practice though, I think."

They fell silent for a moment, Ginny simply watching as Dean added touch ups and the smallest detailing to his rough sketch. Only for a moment, however, before she spoke once more. "Can I have a look at some of your drawings?"

Dean paused in his sketching and glanced at Ginny sidelong. "Why?"

Ginny shrugged. "I don't know. I'd like to see, I guess."

"They're really not that great," Dean said, unconsciously tucking his sketchbook to his chest. He wasn't exactly bashful about his sketches but he didn't particularly want anyone looking at them. Some of them felt just a little… personal. For very few people would Dean feel comfortable looking through the scarred pages. His family for one. Seamus, too, but Seamus was an exceptional case. Dean had never really made the decision to allow Seamus to look at his work. Seamus had made that decision for him and Dean had simply accepted it as inevitable.

Ginny seemed to understand Dean's unspoken words, for she only smiled and nodded. "Okay. Whatever." Then, in a very deliberate change of topic, she took a breath and sat up a little straighter in her chair. "Next DA meeting's on Friday afternoon."

Dean twisted slightly in his seat to look up at her more properly. "How do you know?"

"Hm?"

"My coin hasn't…" Dean filched into his pocket and pulled out the galleon that all DA members carried. A glance at it still showed the time and date from their last meeting.

Ginny smiled a little self-satisfyingly. "There has to be some perks to being the sister of one of the founding members," she said.

Dean didn't get a chance to reply, for at that moment the porthole into the common room burst open to the sound of the words, "Dean Thomas, if I get frostbite I'm blaming you."

Dean found himself grinning at the sight of Seamus charging across the room towards him. His cheeks were flushed, the tip of his nose red, and when he tugged his hat off his head the dirty blond tufts of his hair even more dishevelled than usual. Dean, already anticipating what was to come, barely had time to lower his sketchbook to the ground beside him before Seamus launched himself on top of him.

"Ow," Dean complained as an elbow jabbed into his gut. Then he yelped when icy fingers poked at his belly. "Hey, ice demon, get your claws away from me!"

Seamus laughed as he settled himself more fully sprawled across Dean's legs. He didn't retract his frozen fingers from Dean's stomach. "You owe me a Warming Charm."

"And why's that, exactly?" Dean asked. He didn't bother throwing Seamus from his lap, and not only because he'd become accustomed to such contact over the years. That Seamus was doing it at all, that he'd laughed, even, was good. It was better than good, because he hadn't really done either for quite some time. Dean even tentatively felt the hope these days that Seamus really would get better. He'd put up with being attacked by his frozen fingers if it would make him happy. "Why should I be responsible?"

"Because you abandoned me to go on me own, like," Seamus said, and the shiver he gave was only half feigned. Apparently it was as cold as it looked through the window. He grinned up at Dean as he repeatedly rolled his fingers in little jabs across Dean's belly. It kind of tickled.

"Oh, so you're so incompetent at Warming Charms that you can't do one properly yourself?" Dean raised an eyebrow. "You, who is a natural born pyro and turns into a magical furnace when you sleep?"

Seamus blinked up at him, then looked thoughtful for a moment. "Oh yeah. Should've probably put a Warming Charm on, like."

Dean shook his head. "I take it that means you didn't?"

"Maybe."

Dean found himself laughing. Seamus, who was surely more than capable of producing such the charm himself – and quite often did of a sort in his sleep entirely accidentally – and who was certainly smart enough much of the time, had apparently overlooked the obvious. It was fairly typical of him but it was still funny.

"Oi," Seamus said, poking his cold fingers into Dean's belly once more. "Don't laugh at me."

"I can laugh at you when you're being an idiot." He grinned.

"I'm not an idiot, like. I just didn't think of it."

"Yeah, you're an idiot."

"I'm not!" Seamus rolled further into him and set about attacking him with jabs to his stomach. Dean found himself laughing more than he bothered to push Seamus away from him, even if the attack was almost painful. Seamus didn't last long before he has laughing heartily alongside him.

Only when Dean managed to roll Seamus off of him, when Seamus himself crawled toward the fire with hands held out before him, did he even think to glance over his shoulder to where he'd abandoned his conversation with Ginny. Only to find that she'd seemingly gone in search of her own friends and was even then engrossed in an animated discussion with Jill that Dean only knew because of the DA.

Shrugging, for she didn't appear annoyed by his accidental distraction, Dean shuffled over to the fireplace and rubbed a hand over Seamus' head in a scuffle. "You're hair's a mess," he said.

Seamus grinned up at him. He'd been almost surprised when Dean attempted to make a show of being comfortable with touching him with friendly affection, from hugs to casual touches. Little things to show that he didn't care about what Seamus had revealed to him, that he didn't hold the same prejudices as Seamus' family. "Well, whose fault it that?"

"You're hat's?"

"Says you who just made it worse."

"Have you ever actually brushed your hair, Seam?"

"Look, just because I don't own a brush, like, doesn't mean…"

* * *

"Harry! _Harry!"_

Dean woke barely hours after falling to sleep to the sounds of Ron's frantic bellowing. Clawing his way from sleep, he lurched into sitting and blinked blearily across through the gloom of the dark dormitory.

Ron stood at Harry's beside as Harry himself thrashed and writhed in a mess of sheets and blankets. For a second Dean though he might have been having a seizure and he momentarily froze in horror. What the hell were they supposed to do when someone was having a seizure? In that moment Dean couldn't even recall.

It didn't matter, however, for after barely seconds of watching in mounting, immobilised panic, Harry lurched to sitting himself. His arms flailed, chest heaving as he panted. He was a mess, his face streaked with sweat made visible by Ron's and Neville's _Lumos_ charms. Whipping his head blindly, gasping and arm reaching for – what? – Harry seemed only really awake for all of a few seconds before –

In a lunging roll, he threw himself to the edge of his bed and vomited all over the floor.

Ron only just managed to dance out of the way to the sound of Neville's shrill, "He's really ill. Should we call someone?"

To his credit, Ron didn't look deterred by the mess that was rapidly spreading around him. Reaching towards Harry, awkward hands not quite touching, he seemed only capable of uttering near-pleading repetitions of "Harry! _Harry!_ "

Dean was stumbling out of his own bed and halfway across the room before Harry righted himself and grabbed desperately onto Ron. There was such feverish fear on his face, tightening his eyes and thinning his lips, that Dean paused in step. "Your dad," Harry panted, chest heaving and fingers like claws as they grasped Ron's arm. "Your dad's… been attacked…"

"What?" Ron sounded as baffled as Dean felt.

"Your dad! He's been bitten, it's serious, there's blood everywhere –"

"I'm going for help," Neville said, his voice scared and yet edged with frantic determination. He turned and all but fled from the room as Ron clambered onto the end of Harry's bed, patting him gently with that same awkwardness and speaking in hushed words.

Dean watched them for a moment, heard Harry's demands and outbursts that broke from the quiet murmurs with "No!" and "It wasn't a dream!" A glance towards Seamus' bed found Seamus similarly staring at Harry, wide-eyed and pale. Sparing another glance at Harry and Ron himself, Dean crept tentatively to his bed. The scent of bile, thick and sharp, was already permeating the air. It was slightly stronger at Seamus' bed than it had been at Dean's at the far end of the room.

Seamus shifted silently in his blankets to make space for Dean without glancing his way. Dean obligingly took his place on the mattress beside him. Seamus' sleepy, radiating warmth was comforting at his side.

"What happened?" Dean asked quietly, though he didn't really expect Seamus to know any more than he did.

Seamus shook his head, still not looking away from Harry. He barely seemed to be blinking. "I don't know. I only woke up when I heard Harry shout. He looked like he was having a fit or something, like, then Ron tried to wake him up and he just threw up all over the floor. He's…" Seamus turned wide eyes towards Dean. "Do you think he's okay?"

Dean could only shake his head. He didn't know any better than Seamus did. "Neville's gone to go and get McGonagall I'd say, so we'll just have to wait and see."

"Shouldn't he go to the Hospital Wing or something?"

For a moment Dean didn't reply. Despite the severity of the situation, he couldn't help but view their conversation a little objectively. He couldn't help but think that, had Harry or anyone else heard the real concern in Seamus' words, they wouldn't think him as cruel or disbelieving as he claimed to be in the slightest. That he didn't hate or disbelieve Harry as he professed to. Seamus was often loud and blunt, sometimes even crass, but he was a nice person. A good person. He stuck by his friends too, except…

 _Except when he doesn't have a choice_.

McGonagall arrived in a flurry what seemed an impossibly short time later. She swept into the room, drilled Harry with questions that left him shouting in desperate anger once more with professions that "I saw it happen!" Then she ordered Harry from his bed with a silencing, "I believe you, Potter. Put on your dressing gown. We're going to see the headmaster."

Then they were gone. Dean, Seamus, Ron and Neville were left in the room staring dumbly after them, unspeaking. Or at least they were until Neville nervously interrupted their silence. "Maybe we should go down to the common room to wait for them to come back?"

Agreement was unanimous. Dean for one wasn't inclined to staring at the mess of Harry's bed, at the greater mess on the floor, and wonder just what the hell was going on.

The common room was empty, so it must have been as late as Dean had thought. Quite without openly deciding to, they took themselves to the fireplace and placed themselves around it. Or at least Dean, Seamus and Neville did; Ron was on his feet and pacing backwards and forwards, as though he couldn't sit still. Dean couldn't blame him after what had just happened. It had certainly been unnerving, and not only because Harry was their friend. What he'd been saying made it even worse.

About a snake.

About Ron's Dad.

About…

 _It was just a dream, though, right?_ Dean found himself thinking. Even to himself he sounded a little desperate. _It was just a nightmare. He didn't actually… what was it that he saw? He said that Ron's dad had been bitten, but… how would he even know something like that?_

Dean glanced to Seamus at his side. Sometimes – less often than he used to find himself doing but still at times – he would ask Seamus about aspects of the Wizarding world that he didn't understand, or ask for clarification of something he suspected was assumed knowledge for most kids that grew up with Wizarding parents. Could this be the same? Did people dream things that actually happened? If that was true, then Dean could understand Ron's nervousness. If something like that had happened to someone in _Dean's_ family…

Leaning towards Seamus, Dean muttered in his ear in what he hoped was too quiet to be heard by Ron. "Seam? Can that happen, what Harry saw?"

Seamus had been staring at Ron, a slight frown on his forehead that looked more concerned than vexed. He didn't appear angry at all, for that matter. When he turned towards Dean at his words, there was very definite worry in his expression. For Ron and Harry both, Dean would wager, as he would expect him to be. Seamus wasn't heartless, and regardless of what Harry and Ron both might think of him, Seamus still cared for his friends. Dean knew that much.

"What?" Seamus replied quietly, though being Seamus his words didn't pass unnoticed. Ron glanced their way, Neville briefly raising his gaze from where he stared at his slippers, but they turned diverted their attention away a moment later.

Dean shifted slightly closer towards Seamus on the couch. "I mean about the dreams," he whispered, glancing Ron's way himself. "Harry said he saw Ron's dad get bitten by something. Can that happen? Can wizards and witches see things in their dreams?"

Seamus' frown deepened and he appeared to thoroughly consider the possibility for a moment. Then he shook his head. "No," he whispered back. "No, I don't think that – I mean, like, with a spell or a potion maybe, but just dreaming?" He shook his head again. "Don't think so."

"So it was just a nightmare then?"

Seamus didn't look convinced of the assumption, and Dean couldn't blame him. What kind of a nightmare made people respond like that? Dean had honestly thought that Harry had been having a fit, or had perhaps been cursed. It had been horrible to see, and not just because Harry was his friend and he admired him.

They fell silent after that and simply waited. Ron paced, Neville stared at his toes, and Dean sat alongside a silent Seamus. Seamus being quiet wasn't as strange as it once would have been after what had happened that year already, but Dean still didn't like it. A quiet Seamus was like a dog with a limp. He might not tell Dean that there was something wrong, but it was very apparently so.

McGonagall's return, in a whirlwind of speed and motion so abrupt that Dean almost thought she'd Apparated straight into the common room, was accompanied by clipped words. "Weasley, get your trunk. It would help if you could collect anything that Potter might need over the Christmas." She swept past them with a striding step towards the stairwells, not slowing as she relayed her orders.

Ron was hastening to do just that in an instant, though his face turned abruptly ashen. "I'm leaving?" He asked, his voice a croak.

McGonagall, already starting up the stairs to the girls dormitories, paused and glanced towards him. "You will be. You and your siblings. You likely won't be returning until school resumes."

"Wait, then does that mean –?" Ron's voice was panicked as he started towards the girls dormitory staircase after McGonagall. "Was Harry right? Something's happened? Something's wrong with my dad?"

McGonagall didn't reply immediately, but the tightening of her face, the visible clench of her jaw as she spared a glance towards Ron once more, was very telling. After a moment, she nodded curtly. "Get your trunk, Weasley," she repeated. Then she swept away.

Ron stared after her for a moment, his eyes widened with horror and mouth hanging open. Dean couldn't blame him, watched in McGonagall's wake himself with his own foreboding settling upon him. He didn't know what was going on, what craziness had arisen in an already tilted year, but it didn't sound good. Dean could heartily sympathise; f it had been someone from Dean's family, if it had been his mum or Andrew, or one of his sisters, he would have been just as horrified as Ron appeared.

In a handful of seconds, however, Ron seemed to snap to attention. Throwing himself towards the boys dormitories, he all but flew up the stairs in bounding leaps. He disappeared in an instant, leaving Dean, Seamus and Neville staring after him. Neville was the one to move first, and it was in tentative steps towards the stairwell and a muttered, "Might just help him get Harry's stuff." Then he too disappeared.

Dean stared after Neville, after Ron, and fought against the tight feeling in his gut. Poor Ron. Poor Harry too who had apparently somehow seen something in a way that Dean had _no_ idea could possibly happen, but poor Ron most of all. Something had happened to his dad? Something had bitten him? From what Dean could remember of Harry's words, he'd seemed nearly hysterical and horribly worried for the fact that there was 'blood everywhere'. It didn't sound promising.

"That would be really shit," Seamus murmured at his side.

Dean turned towards him. A frown still rested upon Seamus' brow, and he looked nothing if not all the more worried after what McGonagall had said. The worry of a friend for another friend, granted, but it was concern nonetheless.

Dean nodded. "Yeah. It would be."

"It would be shit," Seamus repeated. "Having something happen to your family when you didn't even realise it…" He drew his gaze towards Dean and there was a slightly haunted cast to his eyes. "What do you think happened?"

There was something there that Dean couldn't miss, some realisation that he hadn't quite acknowledged and slowly made itself known to him as he shook his head and murmured his own confusion on the matter. It wasn't about Ron either, about Ron's dad or even about Harry who had apparently somehow seen something through a dream which even with magic _should_ have been impossible.

It was about Seamus, about his family, and about how Dean abruptly realised that Seamus didn't hate them. He didn't know why it had struck him just then, except that at Seamus' bare words it was suddenly apparent. Dean had known it, and he'd accepted it in the perfunctory way that it was simply acceptable to acknowledge that family loved family. And yet at the same time, he realised that he'd almost expected Seamus to dislike his family as much as Dean found himself dislike them. That after how they'd treated him, shunned him and deemed him unnatural simply because he fancied boys instead of girls, he would feel betrayed by them. That he would even _hate_ them.

But that wasn't it. That wasn't it at all, Dean suddenly realised, and in the midst of the disjointed evening and the silent common room it hit him like a struck gong. Seamus was heartbroken, devastated even that his family didn't understand, that they were disgusted with him, but he didn't hate them. He wanted them to accept him because he still loved them. Of course he would, Dean realised with a mental kick to himself for his foolishness. Even after what had happened, it would be next to impossible to simply drop family like that. Seamus cared for them and had done for fifteen years. Something like that wouldn't be so easy to change.

And Seamus… maybe Seamus didn't want it to change. When Dean thought about it, though it was impossible to consider his own family shunning him in such a way, he wasn't sure if he could hate them for being disgusted with him either. He'd just want them to love him anyway, regardless of their opinions.

Forcing himself to shunt aside his sudden epiphany, Dean slumped back into the couch and drew his gaze to the fire. Not now. Now wasn't the time to bring up a discussion like that, if there ever was an appropriate time for such a thing. An incident had just occurred, someone was hurt, confusion abounded and Dean even in the mess of Dean's thoughts he couldn't help but want to ask questions. How had Harry seen something like – what, and attack upon Ron's dad? In a _dream_? Dean didn't know. He hadn't even known such a thing was possible. As for what had happened…

"I don't know," Dean finally replied to Seamus' question. "It sounded like he'd been attacked by an animal or something and was in a pretty bad way."

Seamus nodded as though he'd deduced as much himself. Swallowing audibly, he shifted in his seat until his shoulder butted against Dean's. It was a familiar motion, one that Dean had come to accept and almost expect of Seamus when he was upset. He was a tactile person and sought comfort from such contact. Though Dean had never been overtly tactile himself, he wasn't averse to it, and Seamus had made him more than familiar with such casual touches over the years. He even realised he quite liked the support a shoulder pressed against his own provided.

"Poor Ron," Seamus murmured, echoing Dean's earlier thoughts.

"Yeah," Dean agreed, memory of Ron's horrified expression rising in his mind once more. "I can't even imagine what that would be like."

"And poor Harry too. Seeing someone you know getting attacked…"

Dean glanced at Seamus sidelong. He looked a little pale, and as always when speaking of Harry seemed more than a little regretful. Dean didn't comment on that but only nodded his agreement. "Yeah. Poor Harry too."

Neither of them moved for the rest of the night. Not when McGonagall returned with the rest of the Weasleys before departing in a flurry of motion, or when Neville came down the stairs to join them. It was a sombre night in the Gryffindor common room.


	9. Chapter 9 - Fifth Year - Part III

**Chapter 9: Fifth Year - Part III**

Before he'd left for the holidays, Dean had thought he might not even want to come back to school given that it would mean leaving his family. The situation with Ron's dad, of which somehow the papers had gotten a hold of and vaguely detailed as being an 'incident at the Ministry' yet had somehow wound him up in hospital, made Dean all the more aware of the fragility of his own family. Of how in an instant anything could happen to them and he might not even be present to realise it.

So Dean spent the entire break with his family. With his mum as she took herself to each of their cousins' houses for lunch as was typical of them. With Andrew as he idled most of Christmas day in the kitchen, ensuring that his roast didn't dry out and that there were enough baked potatoes to feed a small army. With Millie as she asked him to help with her traditional wall repaint repaint and Keira with the new gaming device called a Playstation that she'd gotten for a gift. With June too, who was chewing her way through an impressive pile of books at a rapid rate yet for some reason still requested he read with her aloud. Or listened, more correctly, for though she always spoke in quiet words June seemed love the sound of her own voice.

Dean loved his family and he worried about them. He worried even more after Harry's proclamation the previous year about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and more still after what had happened with Ron. And he liked their company, of his parents and sisters. He truly did.

And yet even so, by the end of the Christmas break Dean was more than happy – relieved, even – to get away from them. Maybe it was simply that boarding school life was rubbing off on him but he was certainly happy enough to return to Hogwarts.

Alone, as he would have it, for apparently Seamus was already back. Dean wasn't sure whether to be concerned for that fact or not; Seamus had seemed chirpy enough in the letters they'd exchanged pertaining to Christmas and that very fact, but then Dean had also been vastly ignorant the previous summer when Seamus was deliberately hiding the explosion that had happened at his house.

As it happened, however, when Dean started up the hill from the carriages after alighting from the train, the chill winter air bitingly sharp and his only accompaniment a puff of pale smoke that erupted from his own mouth with every breath, it was to have Seamus present himself before him. Or more correctly for Dean to notice him immediately, as it was impossible not to. Seamus was loud, raucous even, and no one with a pair of ears to hear with would have been able to miss him.

"You've got shit aim, Ernie! Were you even aiming for me, like, or did you mean to hit that tree on purpose?"

Halfway up the slope towards the school, Dean paused in step. His gaze was drawn to a clutch of half a dozen of his fellow students as they tore across the grounds. Dean saw Seamus and Wayne, Susan and Hannah, and a pair of other Hufflepuffs that he rarely conversed with – Ernie MacMillan was a stuck up twat and Megan Jones was so aloof that Dean had thought her something of a cow for until Hannah had informed him that she was actually a very nice person, if a little detached.

They appeared to be engaged in a somewhat violent snowball fight. Or at least violent on part of Seamus, Ernie and Susan, the latter of which had almost eerily accurate aim. Wayne, Hannah and Megan appeared to be more correctly the subjects of their target practice than competitors. Or at least Dean thought as much until Ernie lobbed a snowball at Seamus' head and Seamus seemed to take it as a personal insult.

In instant retaliation, he was launching himself across the distance between them and tackling Ernie to the ground in a heap that set the rest of them barking into cackles of laughter. Ernie was on his feet and chasing after a suddenly fleeing Seamus an instant later, only for the tides to turn when Seamus managed to scoop a snowball together and spin threateningly with a wide grin.

Dean found himself smiling. He hadn't had a snowball fight all year, and abruptly he missed not making the time for one. Not only that but the sight of Seamus so comfortable with all of the Hufflepuffs was nice to witness; Dean had known that he was getting along with Wayne again – perhaps very well – and had even mentioned speaking to Hannah and Susan once more on several occasions. Even so, Dean couldn't help but think they hadn't appeared to be truly friends until that moment.

It was satisfying. Dean really had missed the Hufflepuffs.

He hadn't realised he'd paused in step until Seamus, apparently catching sight of him, skidded to a stop and flung a hand into the air before lurching through the snow in Dean's direction. It was only luck that he missed one of Susan's ridiculously accurate snowballs, but he didn't even seemed to notice.

It should have been expected, but when Seamus flung himself at Dean he was unprepared enough that they actually toppled to the ground. Dean's breath gushed from his lungs as his back slammed into the ground, cushioned just barely by the ankle-deep snow. For his part, Seamus didn't seem to care about that, either.

"Perfect timing!" He exclaimed, pushing himself up off of Dean with his wide grin stretching brilliantly across his face. His cheeks were flushed from excitement and the cold, tufts of his sandy fringe poking from beneath his hat and eyes sparkling merrily. Dean wouldn't have been able to keep from smiling in return had he wanted to. "We've only just started, like, I think about an hour ago, so you can join in."

"Only just started an _hour_ ago?" Dean said, sitting off as Seamus scrambled off him. "How is that perfect timing?"

"We've only just started is why."

Dean allowed himself to be hauled to his feet by Seamus' ready hand. It was a fierce tug, excessive even, as was typical of Seamus. He might be short – one of the shortest boys in their year in fact – but he had an unexpectedly strong arm. "Are you playing teams?" Dean asked.

"Nope. Free for all." Seamus started back towards the game that had continued in his absence, beckoning Dean after him. "Come on."

"Sure. I've just got to put my stuff up in the dorm," Dean said, reaching down to snatch up his slightly damp bags that had been flung to the ground by Seamus' ploughing enthusiasm.

Seamus paused in step, regarding him with a quirked eyebrow. "Just put a Drying Charm on it and leave it for later."

"Or I could just take it up to the dorms now," Dean said, smirking as he deliberately turned and continued back up to the school.

He didn't need to glance over his shoulder to see the pout Seamus wore. It was all in the words that followed after him. "You're such a stubborn jackass, like. Always so insistent." Then he raised his voice, apparently calling to the Hufflepuffs. "Just going to dump Dean's stuff, yeah? We'll be back in a minute."

Calls of acknowledgement and Ernie's shout of, "Yeah sure, you're running away, we all know it," followed them as they started up the hill. Dean didn't urge Seamus to stay behind and continue the game. He might call Dean stubborn, but when Seamus had his mind set on something it was just as unlikely that he be swayed from his decision.

Falling into step beside Dean, Seamus nudged him with an elbow as he stuck his hands into his pockets. "Good Christmas?" He asked.

Dean grinned. "Yeah, same as usual. Tell you what, though, it's good to be back at school."

"You take that back, Dean," Seamus chided with mock horror. "How could you say that?"

Laughing, Dean shook his head. "Well, if I had to read one more book with June or sit through another one of Keira's frankly terrible attempts at completing Rayman, I think I'd kill myself."

"Rayman?" Seamus asked curiously.

"She got a Playstation for Christmas."

Seamus nodded understandingly. He might not live in the Muggle world but his Muggle side of the family – though not as close as his Wizarding side – had always kept him in touch with it. A little bit, anyway. Dean doubted he knew all that much about Playstations. "The most important question, though, like: did she let you play it?"

"The bloody hide of her, you know she didn't," Dean said in mock mournfulness.

Seamus laughed. "See, this is why I don't have younger brothers or sisters."

"You know, I don't think it was really up to you if you had them or not."

"It bloody well was. Scared any future chits away when I was born, like."

Dean snorted. "You're so full of shit."

Seamus only grinned.

They continued their wandering in silence for a few steps before Dean, nagged by the increasingly persistent question that hung between them, caved and asked. "How about you?"

"How about me what?" Seamus said, though Dean knew he understood exactly what he referred to.

"Were you… how was your Christmas?"

Dean wasn't sure he wanted to know. He was still angry with Seamus' family, still couldn't believe they could be so prejudiced as to think as they did, as to _hurt_ Seamus as they did, and he wasn't sure if he'd ever overcome that. He wasn't sure if Seamus would ever get past it either, though Dean had grown to understand that he likely wanted to.

Seamus shrugged with a casualness that the awkward scratch to the side of his head bellied. Dean could read Seamus well enough to know when he was hiding his struggles. "It was actually pretty good, really."

Dean nearly paused in step in surprise and was proud of himself for how casual he kept his voice when he replied. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Seamus stuffed his hand back into his pockets, looking to his toes as they kicked at a clump of snow that hadn't been swept from the courtyard they began to cross. "I mean, after the first bit anyway. When Uncail Jack ran his mouth like the bastard he is on the first day, Eoghan said he'd had enough of it and we went to his place in London." Seamus shrugged. "Didn't see anyone else for the rest of the holidays 'cept me cousin who lives in Wales at the moment 'cause she's cool."

As Seamus bit off any further words, expression deceptively mild to the point of blanknes, Dean watched him from the corner of his eye. He didn't know what to say. Should he comfort him? It would be empty comfort, because Dean didn't feel as though reassuring Seamus that it was alright, that his family would come around, that things would get better, was truly on the table. Seamus' family didn't deserve that. They really were a bunch of bastards, and they didn't deserve the time Seamus spent mulling in regret for what he was.

Even so, Dean hated to see Seamus upset. He'd always hated it, whether Seamus was angry or, on lesser occasions, saddened. It just never seemed right.

"I'm sorry," Dean found himself saying, more because he didn't know what else to say than anything.

Seamus shrugged. With that shrug he seemed to thrust aside his regret, for he turned to Dean with a wide smile that was perhaps a little too wide. "'S alright. I had a blast with Eoghan and he's got a really nice place. Managed to get most of the holidays away from Hogwarts too, like, so that was pretty fantastic. We went and caught up with me cousin Caitlin too for a bit."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," Seamus nodded. "And she's alright. Really alright, actually. Like…" His smile became a little more genuine this time. "Really alright."

Dean understood that, even if Seamus didn't say it. He understood what that meant. Seamus' family might largely treat him like shit for what he was, for who he liked, but apparently not all of them thought the same way. Eoghan was different, for one. This Caitlin, too. Dean abruptly wished he could meet her, almost as much as he wanted to see Eoghan to simply tell him what an incredibly top bloke he was. It would take a lot to stand up to his family, even in defence of his brother, but Eoghan apparently did so without a second thought.

"That's great, Seam," Dean said, smiling warmly.

Seamus flashed him a smile, and it was just as warm. Heartfelt and, though sadness still touched his expression, he seemed lighter for it. Something had changed over the Christmas, and whether it was simple acceptance that his family were all, in Dean's opinion, assholes or simply Eoghan and Caitlin's support, he seemed better for it.

Then Seamus elbowed him almost viciously in the side and, leaping up the steps into Hogwarts' Entrance Hall, disappeared through the doors. "I'll race you to the Tower, Dean! Last one there loses a free shot to a snowball."

And that was that. Dean couldn't spare the moment to think about regrets, to consider the situation and wonder what else might have happened that Seamus would only possibly tell him about. He had a race to win because, amusing as Seamus found it, he didn't much fancy a snowball to the face.

* * *

With a flick of his finger, Seamus sent the galleon flipping into the air end over end before snatching at it once more. It was a ridiculously high flip, Dean acknowledged, watching as he once again flicked it into the coin air so that it soared halfway to the Entrance Hall ceiling as they passed through.

"Have you been practicing with that?" He asked amusedly.

Seamus only flashed him a grin, shrugged, and tossed it once more.

Dean wouldn't put it past him. Since he'd bitten his tongue, shoved aside the pain and embarrassment - and fear for undermining his mum - and apologised to Harry, since he'd started to come with Dean to the DA meetings, Seamus had barely had the coin out of his hand. Dean hadn't ever seen him so committed to something and thought it might have even been an attempt to make up for what he'd done. Except that Seamus didn't seem to need the validation. It seemed, if nothing else, to be entirely for himself.

The article in the Quibbler, a quirky magazine apparently run by one of the fourth year Ravenclaw girls from DA, seemed to have urged the Wizarding world to take a turn in their perspective of Harry. Angry scepticism shifted into thoughtful consideration, even curiosity when Harry happened to mention anything even vaguely pertaining to the political status of their world. It was driving Umbridge insane, and Dean considered that, if for nothing else, the article was worth it.

Seamus said it wasn't so much the article itself but who wrote it that mattered. Even Dean knew the name Rita Skeeter. He recalled her articles from the previous year, when she'd been apparently deliberately targeting Harry and those around him in search of a good story. She'd gotten one this time too, it would seem and it only made her more noticeable in the public eye. Which, given she was a gossip mongering journalist, was probably much to her delight.

For what it was worth, regardless of what Dean had heard Harry, Ron and Hermione - and Ginny too for that matter, as she seemed nothing if not loudly opinionated on the matter - the article made a difference. To the world and to Seamus, it would seem, who had been nothing if not relieved but a day later as he seemed to have reached a decision.

"It's that article," he explained when Dean had asked him about it. "At least now I can pretend that - I mean, now it might actually convince me mam that I'm..." He trailed off with an awkward shrug, but it hadn't quite dimmed the relief in his eyes that made them all but glow with relief. That very day he'd approached Harry about what he'd said earlier that year and apologised.

He claimed he'd had a change of heart. Dean wasn't fooled for a second, regardless of whether Seamus kept mum about the situation or not. The next DA meeting, without even asking if he wanted to come, Dean had dragged Seamus along with him. Seamus hadn't complained. He hadn't even mentioned the assumption on Dean's part. For once, Seamus didn't seem to have much to say on the matter.

Heading up to the seventh floor, Dean adopted a casual expression as they passed a clutch of Ravenclaws he recognised as being distinctly outside of the DA forces. It wasn't like they were pitting themselves against the rest of the school and its students, but everyone had unanimously agreed better to be safe than sorry. None of them knew who would be inclined to blab to a teacher. And by teacher, they all knew the feared toad Umbridge was the one who really concerned them. The 'questioning' that had been going on of late… it was troubling.

When the Ravenclaws had passed, Dean started down the adjacent corridor towards the portrait of the dancing trolls. He was just in time to catch the tail end of a pair of girls slipping into the Room of Requirement beyond. "Oh, Ginny, could you hold it for a sec?" He called.

Ginny, glancing over her shoulder towards him, smiled and paused in step. The blonde girl at her side - Luna, Dean remembered her name to be, the one whose dad ran the Quibbler - spared them a vague glance before continuing inside.

"Thanks," Dean said as he drew to her side, Seamus in step alongside to him.

"No problem," Ginny shrugged. Then she spared a glance for Seamus. Or, more correctly, a glance and another smile. "Hi, Seamus. How are you?"

Seamus smiled easily in reply. Quite aside from her apparent dislike - or at least disagreeability - of earlier in the school year, any discord between them seemed to have fizzled out until the both of them were more than friendly. Dean was relieved for that fact. He liked Ginny; it would have been a shame if their friendship had died for her antagonism with Seamus.

"Good good, Ginny," Seamus said. "I swear I'll get it corporeal today, like." Then his grin became almost challenging.

Ginny raised an eyebrow. She spared a brief wink at Dean as though they shared a joke. "Are you so sure of that?"

"Positive."

"You sound very confident in yourself."

"I've got a better memory to use than last time," Seamus said easily. "Besides, after making it once just normal, like, the shape part should come easier. Right?"

At that Ginny seemed to accept his argument with good humour. She'd certainly managed fast enough herself.

They were working on Patronuses at present - which was fantastic in Dean's opinion - and it was their third week running with it as the primary focus for the lessons. Not that it was the first they'd practiced Patronuses, for they'd touched upon it weeks ago. It wasn't like they would only focus on Patronuses, that was, for one meeting was never wholly committed to one task. Protego Charms were a bit of a favourite amongst the members as a whole, as well as duelling classes, though it was always a good idea to come prepared with a first aid kit.

Dean hadn't been able to manage his own corporeal Patronuses yet but it didn't bother him as much as it seemed to bother Seamus. Seamus had taken to everything the DA taught with a vengeance as though making up for lost time. Which he was, Dean thought, and was doing remarkably well considering he'd missed a whole term of their meetings. Unfortunately, where Seamus tried exceptionally hard to the point of competing with himself, Dean was naturally dragged along in his wake. The challenge Seamus had given him last meeting as to who would produce their Patronus charms first… Dean couldn't exactly pass that up, now, could he?

"I still can't believe you got your corporeal Patronus practically on your first try after making one at all," Seamus was saying, shaking his head.

Ginny pulled a face. "Hardly my first try. Merlin, I'm nowhere near as good as Harry is."

"Yeah, but he said he had a Dementor to pit himself against, right?"

"A Boggart," Dean corrected. "His Boggart's a Dementor, isn't it?"

Ginny nodded. "Yeah, that's what he said." She shuddered theatrically. "Imagine your Boggart being a Dementor. How horrible"

Dean and Seamus exchanged a glance. No one liked talking about their own Boggarts, but for Dean at least, and maybe even for Seamus, they'd reconciled themselves what their own meant to them. They were… comfortable, even. Accepting. Not that Dean would ever be happy to face one, that was.

Starting into the Room of Requirement, the familiar room of wide, open space, bookshelves packed full of books on Defensive Arts, the thick lining of pillows across the floor, it was to find it barely half full. As had become customary for them, Dean took himself alongside Seamus – and Ginny, which wasn't as routine but not unexpected either – to a corner to wait for the rest of the members. They chatted idly, Ginny even making a show of calling up her own Patronus; the gossamer cloud was quite a sight, even if she didn't quite manage a corporeal version of it.

As expected, and as anticipated from Ginny's words, when Harry stood before them all with Ron and Hermione at his side, it was to announce that they would be starting the lesson with a continuation of their Patronus practicing. "I know it's hard, guys, but really, when you get the hang of it –"

"It's fantastic," Hermione said, beaming. She'd produced her first Patronus weeks before and had been more than ready to share her experience. About what it felt like, about how comforting that protective glow was, even when faced with no apparent danger.

Harry spared her a nod before continuing. "Right. So remember, guys. Happy memories. If you'd feel better partnering up to help each other out, go for it."

Then they were off.

One of the best parts about their DA sessions – or at least in Dean's opinion – was their autonomy. Aside from the fact that they were actually learning how to defend themselves, that was. Umbridge was a stupid oaf for inhibiting their education, or more importantly their ability to learn protective charms for some misguided fear that they would truly become an army for Dumbledore. It made their choice of name seem even more appropriate.

Dean followed Seamus' lead across the room, waving farewell to Ginny as she departed in search of her own friends. When Seamus had apparently found 'his spot', he turned towards Dean and propped his hands on his hips as though preparing himself with stout determination. "Right. We're doing this today, like. Swear it."

"I swear," Dean said with mock seriousness, raising a hand as though standing testimony in a court of law. "Although, I think you should accept that you're going to lose our contest."

Seamus arched an eyebrow but before he could reply Susan appeared at his shoulder. She glanced between the two of them, eyes sparkling and grinning widely. "What's this, a competition? What's the stakes?"

Right behind her, Hannah stood alongside Wayne. Apparently, since Seamus had started with the DA, Wayne had deemed it 'okay' to do so himself. Dean tried very hard not to begrudge his behaviour; he liked Wayne, after all. Although… He supposed that Wayne's actions was fairly indicative of his relationship with Seamus restarting. Seamus hadn't spoken to Dean of anything of the sort, but he didn't need to.

They were close. Very close. Dean really wished he didn't get so jealous for that. What kind of a friend got jealous of their friend's boyfriend?

Seamus turned smile upon Susan. "We're going to see who can produce their corporeal Patronus first. Today. It's going to happen." He nodded sharply, entirely sure of himself.

"But haven't you not been able to make one yet?" Wayne asked curiously, staring at Seamus. The way he looked at him… Dean was a little embarrassed that he hadn't noticed it the previous year. Seamus hadn't mentioned that they'd gotten back together, it was true, and Dean hadn't seen any other visible evidence of intimacy, but surely it was undeniable by now. Surely.

The previous year, Dean had been almost as oblivious as Seamus seemed to be for the attention Wayne afforded him. Shrugging, Seamus shook his head. "No. But there's a first time for everything, right?" Then he turned to Hannah. "You've got yours, like, haven't you?"

Hannah smiled and flushed slightly, though it was more in satisfaction than embarrassment. "Yeah, I managed mine."

"It was a bird, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, a hummingbird." She sighed slightly, as though the thought alone satisfied.

Seamus turned his attention fully towards Hannah, pinning her with his gaze. Around them, their fellow DA members were already making their attempts. Dean could see several producing wispy spurts from their wand, lighting the room around them in a soft, white, but somehow warm glow. "So how did you do it, like? Is there some other kind of trick you can do to get it shaped into an animal?"

Hannah had all of their attention now. Susan in particular, Dean noticed, appeared as attentive as a doting student for her wide-eyed expression. She had a fierce desire to fully produce her Patronus. But Hannah only shook her head. "I don't think so. I think it just gets easier the more you practice it. Or maybe the happier the memory?"

Dean hadn't really expected anything else, and apparently neither had Wayne, who shrugged, nodded and offered an accepting smile. "Oh well. It doesn't surprise me that there's no knack to it. Practice makes perfect, right?"

"Have you ever just taken things for granted, Wayne?" Seamus asked, more curious than accusatory. "Like, think that maybe you might just be naturally good at something?"

Wayne shrugged. "Not really. But I don't mind."

"Yeah, but you're good at, like, chess."

"Not that good."

"And you have really neat handwriting."

"Oh, that's a skill now, is it?" Dean teased. He shot Wayne a smile to show his words weren't an insult.

Wayne, the nice bloke that he was who likely didn't think for a second that Dean had actually been insulting him anyway, smiled back instantly. "Yeah, and I'm pretty sure that gets better with practice too."

"Shut up, Wayne, I'm paying you a compliment," Seamus said. Then he drew his wand and turned to Dean. "Alright, let's do this. You're on, Thomas."

Dean only shook his head as he drew his own wand. Around him, Susan, Hannah and Wayne all set about beginning their practicing. Across the room there were a few more corporeal Patronuses springing to life alongside the clouds of white gossamer; a burly bear lumbering around a fourth year girl, a Marlin swimming through the air as though it was water, an otter turning flips and in the corner Ginny's horse tossing its head in a silent whinny.

They really were incredibly cool. Dean would admit that much, and heartily agreed with Susan's enthusiasm. Not only were they kind of beautiful but they provided protection against Dementors too. Dean hadn't had a whole lot to do with Dementors after their third year, and even then it had only been from a distance, but he could appreciate their menace for what it was. He'd rather have a defence ready, and if a corporeal Patronus was the strongest defence…

Closing his eyes, for it was always easier to visualise when they were closed, Dean turned his attention retrospectively. To the past. To soft thoughts and warm memories. He saw his mum grinning widely at him as she dabbed a finger of peanut butter on his nose. He relived the vague memory of his mum and Andrew dancing at their wedding, remembered realising that his mum was beautiful in her red and white dress even at that age and even as his mum. She'd looked so happy then that the sight of it had filled Dean with joy; even if he hadn't liked Andrew he would have loved him for how happy he made his mum.

He remembered his first goal in the football little leagues when he was eight, how it had been the best feeling in the world. He remembered when his youngest sister was born, when he'd been old enough to really understand what that meant, and how incredibly ugly yet utterly beautiful she'd been. He remembered when his mum had first begun the tradition of letting them repaint the murals on their bedroom walls every year and how Dean had been so proud of the underwater depiction he'd first made. His mum had photographs of every year hanging in their hallway.

Images of friends, of family, or moments – of when Dean had first gotten his Hogwarts letter how excited he'd been, when he'd bought his wand and realised that it was actually really _real_ , when he'd seen Hogwarts itself for the first time. As the warmth of joy and fondness flooded through him, Dean thought of his friends, of their returning nights back at the school when they stayed up late swapping jokes, holiday stories and pilfered sweets. Harry and Ron, Neville even, Seamus sitting at his side and bellowing with great, belly laughs. Seamus had an infectious laugh.

At the thought of it, Dean couldn't help but open his eyes and glance towards where Seamus stood, already conjuring the pale wisps of a Patronus. Ginny's horse darted past, chased by what looked like a terrier, but Dean hardly saw it. He was happy, a truly wonderful feeling that he'd realised was just one of the benefits of attempting a Patronus. Dean knew it wouldn't be like this in a fight, in a situation when he really needed it, but for now it felt wonderful.

He raised his wand and spoke. " _Expecto Patronum_."

White light erupted from the end of his wand, slow at first and then in a flood of brightness. It uncurled, unfurled and spread. It widened into the now familiar shield that Dean had seen numerous times, and then… then it shifted.

A long neck.

A straight, protruding beak.

Feathered wings spreading and sweeping in a wide beat.

It was beautiful. Not what Dean would have considered for himself, but it was. All Paronuses were, but this was _his_.

 _I wouldn't have guessed a swan but…_

"Oh, that's beautiful," Susan said at his side. Dean glanced towards her, to where her own wand was raised and the tendrils of her Patronus fading with her distraction. Dean grinned. "Thanks."

Susan smiled back, then gestured with her wand. "Sorry about that."

"About what?" Dean asked, glancing back to his Patronus. Only to see it fading for his own distraction. "Oh. Oh, well…" He shrugged easily and couldn't shake his smile. He'd done it. He'd actually made it. And it was, if unexpected, absolutely wonderful. "That's okay. I still managed it, right?" And then, with a smirk, "You'll be my witness with Seamus, won't you?"

Susan chuckled but nodded all the same. "Yeah, sure. I'll be your witness. That was gorgeous, so you deserve a victory."

Dean was entirely self-satisfied – actually quite proud of himself – until he turned to Seamus with the reflexive urge to exclaim his victory. Words died on his tongue, however, as barely three feet away from him with his back to Dean, Seamus had his own wand raised. His own Patronus glowing white. His own…

It was a fox. That much Dean could make out as it leapt around Seamus like a child bounding around their parent. Dean felt a different kind of smile settle on his face as he watched, as he saw Seamus turn to follow the passage of its movements, bouncing on the air as though springs coiled in its feet before slinking to the floor to sweep around Seamus in dizzying circles. Were Patronuses supposed to act like the actual animals? It certainly looked like it. When Dean thought about it, even for the short time that it had existed, Dean thought his might have too.

Seamus didn't seem to notice that Dean was watching him. Dean and Susan and Wayne, for that matter, though Hannah was distracted with smiling at her hummingbird as it buzzed around her upraised finger. Dean could have watched Seamus stare at his Patronus all day for the smile he wore. It wasn't only because his expression exactly as Dean had known it for years – bright, carefree and genuinely happy – but because of what it meant that he'd produced it at all. Hermione had mentioned that when the spellcaster was distress, upset or struggled to conjure happy memories, they sometimes had difficulty with producing their Patronus.

Seamus wasn't sad. Or at least he wasn't at that moment. He'd had a hell of a year thus far and Dean wouldn't have thought it inconceivable for him to struggle to push aside that sadness memories for happiness, but he did. For that was what it was, Hermione had explained. As much as Patronuses required drawing happy memories to the fore, they simultaneously needed the sad ones to be shunted to the side.

That Seamus had produced a Patronus at all filled Dean with a different kind of satisfaction. He'd worried about him after what had happened, after the slightly fake joviality he'd worn following the Christmas break. He'd worried – but this was proof that he was getting better.

The fox slunk with belly to the ground, pausing for a moment before darting into flight once more and slipping through Seamus' legs. Seamus actually laughed as he watched it go, turning to follow its passage and in doing so turning towards where Dean stood alongside Susan. He glanced up at Dean and his smile spread even wider. "This is brilliant."

Dean nodded in complete sincerity. "You did great, Seam."

The joy in Seamus' expression was practically glowing even as, attention distracted, the fox Patronus abruptly faded into dissipating white light. "Thanks. Not entirely sure why it's a fox, though."

"What do you mean?" Susan asked.

"Well, I'm hardly the cunning sort, like."

Dean wasn't sure about that. Seamus may not be cunning but he was certainly pretty good at deception at times. Or perhaps evasion would be a more correct description. He'd hidden the fact that he was seeing Wayne from Dean – who, given that they were best friends, would like to think he'd be the first person Seamus would actually tell – and then the disaster of the previous summer holiday. Not to mention the farce he'd put on for his disagreement with Harry that year already.

Seamus might not see it but Dean thought that, at least from his perspective, Seamus was a bit on the cunning side.

"I don't know, Seam, maybe you're more wily that you give yourself credit for," Dean said casually.

Seamus, walking to Dean's side, very deliberately bumped him shoulder to shoulder as though to suggest what he thought of that. "Shut up. But whatever, I beat you."

Dean arched and eyebrow, lifting his chin. "Excuse me?"

"I beat you. Got me corporeal Patronus first, like."

"Actually, I think you'll find you didn't," Dean said, folding his arms across his chest. He felt his lips twitch.

Seamus raised both eyebrows. "Oh really?"

"Really. Here, Susan, back me up on this one."

"He did produce one, Seamus," Susan said, her own smile widening.

"Bullshit," Seamus said, though he didn't appear entirely disbelieving as his eyes widened, gaze blinking up at Dean. "What was it?"

"That's for me to know, not you."

"Oh, fuck that, what was it, like?"

"No, I'm not telling you."

"Dean, don't be a prat."

"Maybe you can guess. Do you think it suits me, Susan?"

"I think it suits you very much," Susan laughed.

"Traitor," Seamus grumbled. "I can't believe you'd both –"

"What's going on?"

At Wayne's worried interruption, Seamus cut himself off and glanced towards him. Dean followed his glance before drawing his gaze along Wayne's line of sight. Towards where Harry stood across the room. Harry and… was that a house elf? A house elf talking very fast and in a very squeaky voice. Half of the room had stopped what they were doing to turn their way.

"… Harry Potter, sir, Dobby has come to warn you… but the house-elves have been warned not to tell…"

The creature – Dobby, Dean supposed, given the use of its own name – was shaking in almost violent trembles. Its eyes were wide as it stared up at Harry imploringly and Harry, as though he'd already accepted the truth of the elf's words, was frowning in very apparent worry. He reached forwards and grabbed onto the house elf's arm – an almost intrusive grab, or at least Dean would have thought so if not for the elf's attempt to throw itself headlong a second later, wrenching itself from Harry's grasp. To Dean's detached relief, it merely bounced off the stone as though it were cushions and fell right back into Harry's waiting hand.

"What happened, Dobby?" Harry asked, urgency lacing his tone.

Dobby was shaking again. "Harry Potter, she… she…"

And the elf was at it again. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Dean couldn't help but wince in sympathy as the elf smacked itself on the nose with its free hand. As if it was entirely commonplace, Harry grabbed its other hand too. "Who's 'she', Dobby?" Then, when no reply was forthcoming, said, "Umbridge?"

Dean felt a wash of horror sweep through him. He unconsciously glanced towards Seamus to see a similar horror morph his expression. Seamus spared him a wide-eyed glance, opened his mouth as though to say something, to add his voice to the mix of gasps and horrified whispers, but Harry was talking again.

"What about her? Dobby, she hasn't found out about this – about us – about the DA?" His voice was desperate as Dean abruptly felt. The elf didn't reply, though a twisting struggle that found it falling to the floor with Harry's hands still grasping its arms suggested it had tried to hurt itself again. "Is she coming?"

Abruptly, so loudly that Dean – and just about everyone else in the room – started with a flinch, Dobby loosed a howl before twisting and writhing as though physically in pain where it sat half raised by Harry's grasp upon it on the floor. "Yes, Harry Potter, yes!"

No one seemed to breathe. In the entire room, everyone was frozen. Every gaze, Dean's included, was locked upon Harry and the elf as Harry slowly released its arms and allowed it to fall into a self-disgusted fit of thrashing on the floor. Then Harry turned towards them all, towards the room at large. In an instant, so sharply that there followed a room-wide flinch once more, he bellowed an order. "What are you waiting for? Run!"

They didn't need telling twice. Like water fleeing through a puncturing hole, they scurried from the room, a roiling mass of students hastening to make themselves scarce before Umbridge – God, Umbridge had _found out_. She was coming? Dean didn't know what that would mean for them, for the DA, for the members themselves, but he didn't pause to contemplate it. Carried along by the tide of students as much as his own feet, he fled the Room of Requirement into the seventh floor before breaking into a sprint.

They drew away from one another. Diverging down corridors, they fled. Dean saw Susan branch away, saw Hannah and Wayne follow right behind her with barely a backwards glance. He caught a glimpse of Ginny disappearing around a distant corner, the blonde head of her friend Luna alongside her. He saw Neville too, stumbling alongside Lavender of all people who looked as white as a sheet and nearly hysterical.

And at his side, Seamus kept pace with him. Despite Dean being taller than him – quite a bit taller these days – Seamus had always somehow managed to keep up just as he did at that moment. They raced down the seventh floor corridor, almost ricocheting off the walls, and pelted through the halls before descending a stairwell. Rounding a corner, descending another stairwell at four steps at a time – it was a miracle that neither of them tripped and fell down to tumble down the stairs

The other students disappeared, falling away as they made a break for it. In what seemed only seconds, it was just Dean and Seamus. But they didn't slow. They barely even spared a moment to gasp a question as to where they were going; Seamus, somehow able to speak coherently at a full sprint, shouted a breathless, "The quidditch pitch wouldn't look that suspicious, right?"

Dean nodded. It would do. Without another word and caught by thoughts of what it would mean for their friends, for the DA, for themselves if they were caught, they picked up pace further. Dean was only happy that, despite his very apparent horror that was steadily morphing into terror mirroring Dean's, Seamus was at his side.

* * *

It had been a big year. That much Dean acknowledged. A big year where much had happened, and the following year would likely be just as big.

The papers spewed article after article about what had happened at the Ministry. About what had happened with Harry, with the rest of his 'party' as the papers phrased it. About He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and his return, something that Dean had known for a whole year since he'd believed Harry from the get-go but seemed all the more real now that the rest of the world acknowledged it too.

The world seemed to have darkened slightly. Dimmed, as though the lights had been snuffed out in deference to the morbidity of what hung over them. It was as though everyone was holding their breath in wait for a disaster that was about to strike, though no one quite knew what direction it would come from.

Dean was worried. He was worried about what would come with the following year and beyond. He was fearful for the safety of his family that, even Muggles, could still be compromised. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named hated Muggles, didn't he? There was no reason that he would target Dean's family specifically, but Dean still worried. He'd written home half a dozen times since the first article in the newspaper preaching Harry's truthfulness had been published. It did little to ease his mind, even when he received replies in return.

Dean was worried about his friends, too. About Harry, because Harry had looked terrible ever since returning from the Ministry. Dean might not be all that close to him, but despite his sullenness of the past year he'd always liked Harry. Respected him. Now he just seemed listless and… sad. Something had happened at the Ministry. Something big and Dean didn't know what.

Ron had been in the hospital after what had happened. And Hermione. And Neville and Ginny and Ginny's friend, Luna. Dean didn't know why they'd gone to the Ministry in the first place but he was worried for all of them. It wasn't right. Something very definitely not right had happened and Dean didn't know what. He was worried about his friends, of what would come in the following months and that… it made the rapidly encroaching holidays all the more unbearable. Dean wanted to be with his family to make sure they were alright but away from his friends? It worried him.

Their OWLs, Umbridge, the incessant arguments with the Slytherins as Gryffindors were want to engage in – all of it seemed so unnecessary now in the light of the larger problem. The much larger problem. Dean hadn't thought about his OWL results in days.

The morning they were set to leave, the hall wasn't quite as subdued as the previous year when they'd been mulling in the death of a fellow student, but there was a certain flavour to the air. A nervousness. A buzzing of agitation, as though everyone wanted to do something – something useful, something to alleviate the sudden descent into the troublesome – but didn't know quite how to go about it. Dean could understand that. Around him, the mostly filled Gryffindor table was peppered with those lost in thought as often as they muttered in casual conversation.

He was absently dressing his toast, lost in his own thoughts, when Seamus grabbed his wrist. "What are you doing?"

Dean blinked, glancing up at him. "What?"

Seamus stared at him, a frown touching his brow before his eyes flickered down to Dean's plate. "Dean, you hate marmalade."

It was such a strangely unexpected thing to say that Dean was momentarily shaken out of his funk to drop his gaze down to his plate. He snorted at the mess of orange gunk he'd spread across his toast. "Oops."

"You're an idiot," Seamus said before promptly picking up Dean's toast and transferring it to his own in a trade. Dean found himself with a peanut butter sandwich placed in his hands. "Lucky you've got me to take the fall for you, like."

Dean couldn't help but smile. It was such a trivial thing, but in the midst of his thoughts – thoughts that he knew everyone was having, even if just on the edges of their awareness – it was a relief. Shaking his head, Dean bit into his sandwich and forcibly turned his attention from his worrisome thoughts. "I still don't know how you can eat that crap."

Seamus shrugged, biting his own toast. "Tastes good."

"It tastes like shit."

"Clearly there's something wrong with your tastebuds, like."

"Or with yours."

Seamus scrunched his nose and jabbed his half eaten toast towards Dean in a pointing gesture. Dean instinctively withdrew despite himself, smirking at the mockingly serious expression on Seamus' face. "I'm the one with the age-old pure blood running through my veins."

"Oh, so that makes your weird preference for marmalade acceptable, does it?"

"Damn right it does," Seamus said, satisfied as though he'd just proven his point. "'Sides, I'm not the only one. Eoghan likes it too."

"Apparently it's a family disorder, then," Dean said, grinning. Only to feel his smile slide off his face as that Seamus returned to him wasn't quite as wide as it perhaps should have been for their teasing nature. Dean was reminded of just one more thing that was concerning him of late. Seamus hadn't spoken much of what he was doing that summer, as though he himself was just as worried, and Dean hadn't asked.

Until now, that was. It wasn't like he'd have much of a chance to do so otherwise. Leaning towards Seamus and casually plucking the crusts from his sandwich, he dropped his voice in a murmur. "Speaking of, have you worked out what you're going to do this holidays?"

The rest of Seamus' smile slipped to be replaced by a slight frown and a touch of pursed lips. He turned that frown towards his upraised toast as though it was suddenly offensive. "You mean going home, like?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I mean…" He paused, swallowed, then adopted a smile. "You know Mum and Andrew would be more than happy for you to come to our place. If you wanted to, that is. Hell, I'd probably need someone other than my sisters around for a bit. They drive me batty, I swear."

The smile Seamus turned to his said he didn't believe Dean's half-lie for an instant. "Sucks for you, having younger sisters."

"Exactly. Do a friend a favour, would you?"

Seamus chuckled. "Maybe I'll stop by for a visit, yeah?"

Dean nodded. He supposed he couldn't ask for more than that. "Yeah, sure. Whatever you'd like."

They fell silent for a moment, each lost in contemplation, before Seamus broke into Dean's thoughts with a murmur. "I think I'm probably going to stay at Eoghan's, like. He said I could, and I…" He trailed off, frowning more deeply at his toast.

Dean watched him sidelong. "You don't want to go back home?"

It was a dangerous question, could just as likely make Seamus snap – for he'd always been a volatile sort of person, if not quite so much these days – as induce very justified maudlin. Thankfully, neither seemed apparent when he replied, even if he still didn't look from his dissatisfying toast. "No. No, I don't think so. I've sent letters home and all, but –" He cut himself off.

A pause, a long pause, and then Dean tentatively prompted with, "But?"

"But," Seamus drew out in a long sigh. "Me mam's sent back to me and all, and me dad, but they're just full of shit, like. They don't say everything's fine, or they're okay that I'm… gay." He struggled with the word and Dean's heart went out to him; it was the first time that he'd so openly admitted it that year, and if that didn't say something for how far Seamus had come since the beginning of the year then Dean didn't know what did. "They didn't even really say anything about me coming home. Just… talked about stuff."

Dean bit back the urge to grumble and growl. It wasn't fair. It really, _really_ wasn't fair. He was still shocked and more than a little furious that Seamus' family would do such a thing to him. They'd seemed so close when Dean had met them in the past. More like a community of friends than a begrudging family; there had been the usual discord between the Kavanaghs and the Finnigans as Dean had seen in his brief visit nearly three years ago, but it had been minimal.

He couldn't believe that Mrs Finnigan, the kindly if bossy little woman he saw at King's Cross every year, and Mr Finnigan, the vague yet enthusiastic man who seemed to dote on Seamus' magical exploits, could possibly act in such a way. Dean had deduced it was pureblood prejudice that induced it as much as anything, but having an explanation for what it was didn't make it any better. Not at all.

"Well, even if they don't, you've got more than enough places to go," Dean said perhaps a little louder and more confidently than he felt. Oh, he was confident in his promise, but in Seamus accepting it? Not so much. He knew Seamus wanted to be with his family despite their mistreatment of him. Dean couldn't blame him for that, even if he might want for otherwise.

The smile Seamus turned upon him was warm in its gratitude. "Thanks," he said, bumping his shoulder into Dean's before taking another bite of toast. Only to pause as something clearly caught his eye and he turned towards the door. "Oh, won't be a sec. I'm just going to –"

Springing to his feet, Seamus dropped his breakfast and hastened across the room towards the doors. Staring after him, Dean caught sight of their trio of Hufflepuff friends as, seeing Seamus approach, they paused in wait for him. Dean turned back to his breakfast. He liked the Hufflepuffs, liked them a lot even, but Seamus had always been the one closer to them. Maybe he was just a more amicable kind of person?

The appearance of another person at his side, however, drew Dean's attention. Glancing up once more, he barely registered her arrival before Ginny was dropping into Seamus' vacated seat with a heavy sigh. He blinked at her, a little surprised by her arrival, before offering a smile. "Hello." Then he frowned.

Ginny looked tired. Not as tired as she had been in the past few days, nor even a week ago when she'd appeared utterly exhausted, but tired nonetheless. Dean supposed that fighting crazy witches and wizards in the middle of the Ministry was a tiring pastime.

"You okay?" He asked by way of greeting.

Ginny smiled gratefully as though she truly appreciated Dean's concern. "Yeah, I'm alright. Looking forwards to the holidays, though."

"I'll say," Dean agreed, even if it was only a mild agreement. He wasn't sure what to think about the approaching holidays and whether they was necessarily a good thing or not in their timing. They were, weren't they?

Weren't they?

"Do you have any plans?" Ginny asked, propping an elbow on the table and chin onto her palm.

Dean shrugged, taking a final bite of his toast. "Not that I'm aware of. Mum and my step-dad usually plan to go away somewhere but I haven't heard of anything. You?"

Ginny shook her head. "I think it's probably not the best time to go away at the moment."

"Yeah, I guess." Dean nodded. They didn't need to discuss why it would be such a bad idea. Understanding sat heavily upon them all.

"We should catch up sometime," Ginny said.

Reaching for his glass of juice, Dean paused and glanced towards her. "Sorry?"

"Us. We should catch up sometime this holidays."

Dean blinked. Certainly he and Ginny were friends, but he hadn't thought they were that close. He liked her and all, but he hadn't… he didn't know if… "You mean with Ron and Harry and all of them?"

The smile rising slowly onto Ginny's face was more than a little amused. It seemed as though she found Dean's words funny. "Well, we could do that too. I was just hoping for the two of us to go out sometime, actually."

For a moment, Dean thought he'd heard her wrong. Then he thought he might have misinterpreted Ginny's words. Surely she didn't mean _that,_ did she? It was true that dating seemed to have exploded a little bit in his classmates that year, if not so much amongst the Gryffindors. He knew Hannah had dated Justin Finch-Fletchley for all of about three months earlier in the year. Seamus had been dating Wayne the previous year and as far as Dean was concerned – though he still didn't think it his place to ask – had gotten back with him. But for Dean? When he really thought about it, maybe it was strange that he _hadn't_ thought about it.

Swallowing, Dean watched Ginny almost warily from the corner of his eye. She looked entirely too comfortable as she watched him in return. Satisfied even. He'd never really considered her in such a light, but should he? Perhaps he should.

"Do you mean like…?" Dean trailed off indicatively, raising an eyebrow.

Ginny's smile broadened and she straightened in her seat, dropping her hands to her lap. "Yeah. Yeah, I do mean like that. But only if you'd want to." She shrugged. "I really like you, Dean. Would you like to go out with me?"

Dean had never really thought about the process of asking someone out. In his mind, if he ever contemplated it at all, it had simply already happened. He'd never considered the steps to actually getting there. Ginny, whether she'd done it before or thought about it enough herself, was entirely comfortable with herself. Or at least she appeared to be. Was it all a show? Dean wasn't sure, but Ginny had always seemed a very honest person, if teasing at times. Maybe even a little blunt in her honesty.

Dean regarded her for a moment. He thought about it, pointedly ignoring the sudden hitching of his heartbeat, thudding loudly in a bid for attention. He liked Ginny. He _did_. He liked her a lot, actually. She was smart, funny to the point of wickedly comedic, animated and interesting. She was a great quidditch player from what he'd seen, and a pretty good spellcaster too. And she was pretty. No one could look at Ginny and think that she wasn't pretty.

Did Dean want to date her though? When he thought about it, there wasn't really anyone else who he would want to date. He'd just… he'd never really thought about it before. Was this how it had happened with Seamus and Wayne? Had Seamus been just as oblivious as well? Who had asked whom in that relationship? Abruptly, Dean wished he'd had the courage – or perhaps the tactlessness – to ask. It would be nice to understand another person's experience, just so it wasn't so confounding to him.

Before he'd even fully considered, Dean found himself nodding. Nodding more pronouncedly when Ginny's smile widened into a grin. "Great!" She said. "That's fantastic. I'll write you to work out when we can meet, then?"

Dean nodded once more. "Yeah, that – that sounds like a plan."

Ginny uttered a short, happy little laugh before rising to standing. She paused just before turning to leave, however, leaning towards Dean, and before he knew what was happening she pressed a kiss onto his cheek. Another little laugh in his ear, a murmured, "I'll see you later, Dean," and she was starting along the table towards her own friends where she'd probably left them barely minutes before.

Blinking in something of a stupor, Dean found himself staring at his plate. At the jug of juice. Across the table to the pair of sixth years in casual discussion and a little along to – well shit, Neville had seen what had happened. He was regarding Dean with raised eyebrows and while not exactly accusatory he wasn't beaming with joy for the situation either. Was it strange? Was it weird because Ginny was Ron's friend? Because Ginny was a year younger than him?

Dean dropped his gaze immediately. He'd never felt so out of his depth before, not even when he'd first come to Hogwarts. At least he hadn't been alone in that instance, despite most of the other kids in his year already having some degree of knowledge about magic. Seamus had seemed as awed as Dean had.

Quite without conscious decision, Dean found himself glancing in the direction he'd last seen Seamus. He still stood at the door, still chatting to Wayne – or to all of the Hufflepuffs, but Dean assumed it was primarily to Wayne. He abruptly wished Seamus would come back, or that he'd gone with him to see their friends. It wasn't that he didn't want to date Ginny – no, the very thought filled him with a strange mixture of excitement and terror that he'd never felt before – but he quite literally had no idea what to do. Maybe Seamus could help with that. Maybe Dean really should have asked beforehand how it had happened with him and Wayne?

Finally turning back to the scraps of his breakfast, Dean fell into his thoughts. Well, at least he'd have something else on his mind for the trip back to London other than worry for crazy Dark wizards and OWL results. He had that to be thankful for, he supposed.

* * *

A/N: Hi everyone! I hope you liked the chapter. If you did, please leave a review. Anything to say? Any thoughts? What did you think of Dean's patronus? Accurate or do you have something else in mind?


	10. Chapter 10 - Sixth Year - Part I

**Chapter 10: Sixth Year - Part I**

In the summer before his sixth year, Seamus didn't return home. He didn't go to the Kavanagh Manor out in the country as he had for every summer for as long as he could remember. He didn't go back to Ireland at all.

That fact, that he didn't take the usual Portkey back over the Channel – it hurt. But Seamus couldn't do anything about it. He loved his country, but he didn't even know when he'd be able to go back. Certainly not to _that_ house.

Eoghan made up for it. He was working throughout most of Seamus' holidays, but he ensured he was around every moment he possibly could be. Seamus thought it was a little ridiculous that he made such an effort; he was sixteen, for Merlin's sake. He needed neither a babysitter nor constant entertainment. Eoghan said he didn't care, that Seamus was stuck with him, and why wouldn't he want to spend time with him?

That was one thing that Seamus would always be thankful for. Eoghan loved him. Still loved him. That hadn't changed even slightly, not once. The rest of Seamus' family, his parents…

 _The moment they saw him, his mam was almost running across the road to throw her arms around his shoulders. She squeezed almost painfully tightly, but Seamus didn't mind. He hadn't seen his mam since the previous Christmas and it hadn't been a good day that they'd spent before Eoghan had decided – thankfully and blessedly so – that they'd have a better Christmas at his own place. For the first time in a long time, Seamus let himself be hugged and even hugged back._

 _His dad was on him the second Seamus' mam drew away just slightly, wrapping Seamus in his own wiry embrace. It was no less awkward but similarly no less heartbreakingly warm than his mam's had been. Merlin but he'd missed them. He'd missed them so much._

 _"Are you alright,_ a leanbh _?" She asked, the sincerity of her words thrumming through the old Irish term of endearment. She rarely used Gaelic, not nearly as much as Eoghan did, but it seemed to naturally seep forth when she grew emotional._

 _Just as she was in that moment, for she didn't wait for a reply before wrapping Seamus in a hug once more. It felt almost compulsive in its tightness "I've missed you so much."_

 _Seamus let himself be held, fighting back the upwelling of his own emotion that demanded to make itself known. He squeezed his eyes closed, curling his arms around his mum in return and pressing his face into her shoulder. "I've missed you too."_

Diagon Alley was overflowing that day. Seamus knew he shouldn't have left it as late as he had to get his school supplies, but he'd wanted to wait for his OWL results to come in and then simply hadn't the time to do so. Mostly, he would admit, because Eoghan, with a self-satisfied smirk, had said he wanted to come with him because, "What, are you going to pay for all of that yourself, like?" He'd ruffled Seamus' hair after that, which naturally resulted in a tussle of which Eoghan, being just a little bigger and a little taller than Seamus, eventually won. "Just let me do this for you, yeah?"

Seamus hadn't protested, even though he'd felt he should. Do this, Eoghan had said. This, along with everything else. Eoghan had practically saved him the previous summer, at Christmas, and then this summer too. He should hardly feel like he needed to offer more.

But Seamus let him and so they delayed. They delayed until Eoghan had a day off – which just so happened to leave it long enough for Seamus to get one of several owls he'd received from his parents.

This one was different to the last few. Those Seamus had exchanged over the summer already had been superficial, riddled with pleasantries and horribly awkward. Asking but without any real hope if Seamus wanted to come to the manor that summer at all, and dropping the subject after two asks when Seamus had declined. This one was different because Seamus' mam and dad made it different. They'd asked if they could come and see him instead.

Seamus desperately wanted to see his parents. The world was changing and things were happening. Dangerous things, and it immediately put Seamus in mind of those he loved. There were scenes in the papers, of sites of destruction and chaos, clips declaring missing people, underground behaviour that was kick-starting discord of the non-magical as often as the magical kind. And it didn't just stop in the Wizarding world; Muggles had been afflicted by mayhem as well. Seamus had been almost frantically writing to Dean every other day fearing for his safety, though he likely wasn't any more endangered than Seamus himself was. The state of the British world had grown just a little terrifying.

For that fear, Seamus desperately wanted to see his family. And yet at the same time he was terrified for other reasons. Their last few meetings… they hadn't gone well. Seamus didn't like to think of himself as weak or cowardly, but before his uncails and aintíns, before his cousins and the influencing exclamations they'd made which natural drew like-mindedness from his parents, Seamus had been rendered mute. He couldn't even defend himself when they called him 'unnatural' and proclaimed that something was 'wrong' with him. When they spoke like that, he _felt_ wrong.

Over the summer – and the past year for that matter – Seamus had been coming to terms with himself. With what and who he liked. With the fact that in many people's eyes there was nothing wrong or unnatural about his preferences at all. Eoghan didn't care and was his most stalwart supporter. His cousin Caitlin, who lived in Wales and who they'd met up with several times over the summer break, actually congratulated him on having the guts to come out to the family. As if it had even been his choice rather than simply an inevitability of who he was.

Surprisingly, his bookworm of a cousin Aimee had been one of the most remarkably supportive, if in her own way. In short, she wasn't. Aimee treated Seamus exactly how she always had and yet went so far as to send him updates of the antics at the manor that year. She hadn't mentioned Seamus' dropped bombshell except for once at the end of her first letter that said, _"I don't really care who or what you like, Seamus. That's your business, not mine, nor anyone else's. I just wanted you to know that."_

And then there was Dean, who Seamus had been terrified of finding out for the same and yet slightly different reasons. He felt ashamed of his fears now after how Dean had reacted. His friend was so clearly hurt by the fact that Seamus had kept things from him that Seamus felt guilty, and yet it wasn't that Seamus was gay that he seemed concerned about. He didn't like it that Seamus' family had found out and exploded. He didn't like that Seamus hadn't confided in him, that he'd kept silent about everything, that he hadn't asked for help when he'd needed it.

What had Seamus done to deserve a friend like Dean? He didn't know, but it just made him like him even more. If he hadn't already fancied him awfully hard for such a long time, that simple fact would have coaxed him the rest of the way.

Seamus had friends who knew and didn't hate him for it. He had family who knew and similarly weren't disgusted, and that meant more than Seamus could say. And yet the fact that his parents, that his mam and dad still couldn't quite seem to accept it… that hurt more than Seamus could say.

The letter they'd sent him had been a hope. A hope that they might have changed their minds, growing to accept him. And yet…

 _"And Exceeds Expectations!" Seamus' mam raised her eyebrows in genuine surprise. "For Potions, I might add. My, that's unexpected."_

 _"I believe that's why it's called 'Exceeds Expectations'," Eoghan said, sharing a grin with Seamus where he sat at his side. Seamus punched his shoulder maybe a little harder than necessary but Eoghan didn't seem to care._

 _"You didn't go so well in Potions, did you, Eoghan?" Seamus' dad asked curiously, if a little vaguely. Try as he might, Angus Finnigan had never been able to grasp many of the concepts of the magical world. Magical Creatures and Herbology were apparently easy for their tangibility, but even witnessing magic from his family couldn't quite click the reality of Charms and Transfigurations in his head._

 _Eoghan adopted a wounded expression. "Hey, just because I flunked out in Potions doesn't mean I didn't go well, like. I got an Outstanding in Transfiguration, you know." He shared a glance with Seamus. "'Sides, Snape's a right asshole, yeah? I'm surprised anyone can even get a pass with him."_

 _Seamus had to nod his agreement. He'd never liked Professor Snape and Snape had never liked him. He put it down to the fact that he was a Gryffindor. Or at least he hoped so, because…_

 _"Hopefully not too much of an asshole," Seamus said, scrunching his nose. "I've got to try and butter him up to let me take Potions next year, like."_

 _"Why is that?" Seamus' mam asked. "I didn't know you wanted to take Potions that badly."_

 _Seamus shrugged. It was a tight gesture, a little awkward, because the entire luncheon was awkward. The restaurant was nice enough, the food tasteful, and there were only a handful of other clients seated despite it being midday, which was always a plus._

 _But regardless of how easily they spoke, Seamus was still discomforted. He got the distinct impression that he wasn't the only one who felt so, too. It was why they were still tiptoeing through superficial subjects such as his OWL results, of which he'd written the results to his parents over a week ago. This meeting… it was because they were all scared. When the world seemed to be falling apart, family abruptly became that much more important. Regardless, apparently, of how 'unnatural' said family was._

 _"I don't want to do Potions, exactly," Seamus explained. "But I figure I might need it for, you know, after school."_

 _Seamus' mam's eyebrows rose once more, in genuine surprise and curiosity this time. "You've got an idea about what you want to do when you finish school, then, like?"_

 _Seamus grinned. An actual grin this time, because_ this _truly excited him. He didn't look at Eoghan, because he knew he would blurt something out if he did – Eoghan being the only other person who knew – but he couldn't withhold his smile. "Yeah, I've got an idea."_

 _Their entire table fell silent for a moment as a waiter appeared and, with a wave of his wand, swept the plates into the air and departed again with the cutlery dancing through the air after him. The brief interruption seemed to have distracted Seamus' mam from her train of thought, for when she turned her attention back towards him and Eoghan it was with an abruptly serious expression. "Will you both be coming to the manor at all for the end of the summer?"_

 _Seamus stared at his mam. He'd already told her, she and his dad both, that he wasn't sure it would be such a good idea. Eoghan had agreed, though Seamus suspected it was mostly because Seamus himself didn't want to. He had never encouraged Seamus to return to their family when he was reluctant; rather, he'd stated that his own apartment would be a home for Seamus as long as he wanted it to be._

 _Seamus appreciated that. He really did. He loved living with Eoghan; they'd always been close despite the immense age gap between them, and living with Eoghan was fantastic and incredibly easy. But at the same time… they might not miss him that much, but Seamus certainly missed his family. He hadn't realised how much he'd come to expect the summer visits to the manor. His life felt unhinged without it._

 _"I, um…" Seamus began, dropping his gaze to his hands. He what? "I'm not sure if I…"_

 _"You don't have to if you don't want to, Seam," Eoghan said, bumping Seamus' shoulder with his own. "Just do whatever you want to, like."_

 _Seamus nodded, but when he glanced up it was to see his parents exchanging a frowning glance. His mam, always the spokesperson of the two, was the one to speak in continuation. "We'd all really love for you to come visit again, Seamus. You too, Eoghan. It feels a little empty without you both, like."_

 _"Empty in that massive house with so many other relatives?" Eoghan said with a small smile. He managed the expression far better than Seamus suspected he would himself._

 _"Would they –?" Seamus began, then cut himself off. All eyes turned towards him as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Um. Would they be alright if I came?"_

 _Eoghan looked pained for a brief moment before hiding the expression immediately. He did a good job of it too. Seamus' dad opened his mouth to speak, frown deepening, but closed it as Seamus' mam interrupted him with an abrupt start._

 _She reached across the table and patted Seamus' hand softly, fondly. The smile she wore was tight and a little pained too, but she managed just as Eoghan had. "Of course it would be. We'll just make sure we won't talk about our little problem, like, yeah?"_

"Bloody hell, I don't think I want to go in another shop every again."

Seamus glanced towards Eoghan as they stumbled from Flourish & Blotts. If Diagon Alley was packed, the bookstore was utter mayhem. Seamus was surprised that they'd both made it out alive.

"That's pretty convenient, like, since we've pretty much got everything."

Starting down the Alley in the general direction of the Leaky Cauldron, Eoghan glanced towards Seamus as though there was something in his voice that didn't sound right. Maybe there wasn't. Seamus hadn't really felt right exactly since that morning with the knowledge that he'd be meeting his mam and dad. That wrongness had only grown more pronounced during the meeting, and after…

"Hey," Eoghan said, clamping a hand onto Seamus' shoulder. "You alright?"

Seamus struggled to swallow the lump in his throat. It had been wedged there since they'd left the restaurant. Or fled, more correctly, Seamus all but dragged in Eoghan's wake as soon as they'd stepped through the door. Eoghan didn't glance back at where they'd abandoned their parents even once. Seamus didn't either. He couldn't.

Nodding, Seamus attempted a smile. He just wanted to go home. It had been a big day, even if not all that much had happened. He had his school supplies now. He was done. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."

Eoghan didn't look convinced even slightly. His frown actually deepened a little. Pursing his lips, he stopped in place, stilling Seamus to a pause beside him for the weight of his hand on his shoulder. "You know it's all bullshit, like, right?"

Seamus nodded again. "Yeah, I know."

"You know they're all a bunch of fucking idiots, right? That it's what _they're_ saying that's wrong, don't you?"

Seamus nodded once more but found he abruptly couldn't speak.

Eoghan stared at him as they walked. He stared and looked on the verge of saying more, his gaze intent. Whatever he'd been about to say was apparently shunted aside, however, as he shook his head slightly. Then he turned in step and made his way through the sea of people back the way they'd come. "Come on. I just remembered we forgot something."

Seamus, automatically following after him and struggling to swim through the crowd himself, called for his attention. "I've already got all my stuff for school."

Eoghan flashed a smile over his shoulder. "I know you do. This is something else."

"What?"

"You'll see." Then Eoghan picked up his pace, and it was all Seamus could do to keep up with him.

 _"I can't believe you! This is why you came? This is why you wanted to meet with us?"_

 _Eoghan was practically shouting in the middle of the restaurant. Heads turned towards their table, the waiter regarding them with the wide-eye and rigid stance of one anxiously wondering if they should run for their manager. Eoghan didn't seem to care. As Seamus stared up at him, wide-eyed himself, he saw that Eoghan didn't even seem to realise he was shouting. Strange, since Eoghan was usually the calmest one of their family._

 _Seamus' mam was flushed in her cheeks but Seamus wasn't sure if it was from anger or embarrassment. At her side, his dad wore a distinctly uncomfortable expression as he glanced between Eoghan and their mam as though waiting for one of them to explode._

 _Seamus supposed it was Eoghan who had done so first, though his mum wasn't far behind._

 _"Don't you dare speak to me like that, Eoghan," she snapped, straightening in her seat. "If you're making accusations –"_

 _"Am I wrong?" Eoghan interrupted. Seamus almost cringed in expectation of his mam's wrath for that. No one ever interrupted his mam. "Really, am I wrong for thinking that? What, did you come to tell Seamus that things weren't going to get better, like, but you wanted him to put up with your bullshit anyway? Are you fucking kidding me?"_

 _"Eoghan!" Seamus' dad exclaimed, horror morphing his expression._

 _"We just wanted to talk, Eoghan," Seamus' mam reattempted, though the rage welling in her voice was palpable. "This is a serious problem that we need to work out. Maybe if we could talk we could help Seamus to –"_

 _"It's not a problem, Mam!" Eoghan really did shout this time, a hand slamming into the table sharply enough that the diners three tables over jumped. Seamus felt himself flinch. "Seamus isn't a problem. Being gay isn't a problem. Who he fancies_ isn't a problem _. It's you – all of you – who are the problem because you're making a fucking big deal out of this when it isn't an issue on his end at all!"_

 _Seamus felt like his eyes were going to pop out of his head. Out of the two of them, Seamus knew he was the more volatile son. Eoghan was older, more mature, the rational one. When a fight arose in their family, it almost always involved Seamus or his mam, and less often his dad. Eoghan was never a part of them._

 _Now it was different._ Eoghan _was different. It was a surreal feeling to have someone become angry on his behalf; in the past, Seamus had been more than capable of taking that step himself. And yet, at least when it came to this subject, when it came to his family and about himself, Seamus always seemed to lose his tongue and cave beneath a mountain of guilt. Each time, it was Eoghan who stepped in to speak for him._

 _He really was the best big brother._

 _"It's a problem, Eoghan," Seamus' mam seethed, "because it's upsetting people. Because this – this_ thing _is unnatural, and we need to work it out. If we're going to keep the family and everyone from getting upset –"_

 _"This_ thing _?" Eoghan started to his feet so suddenly his chair tipped over backwards with a clatter. Seamus flinched again as Eoghan all but spat his words. "This_ thing _is_ unnatural _. There's nothing unnatural about it, Mam! The only unnatural part is how you, his fucking mam, thinks that it in any way should effect how you see him as your kid."_

 _"Eoghan, please don't –"_

 _"No, Dad, fuck you too." Eoghan spun his attention briefly towards their dad before reaffixing his gaze upon their mam. "When you can finally come to the conclusion that sharing your own son's life is more important to you than his fucking sexuality, then maybe you deserve to be a part of it." Then he pushed himself away from the table and was striding to the door._

 _Seamus watched him go. He watched in mounting fear until Eoghan paused at the door, a murderous expression upon his face, and turned a glare upon the waiter still hovering around the register at the opposite end of the room as though everything was his fault. Seamus had never seen him so angry before and yet… he was a little surprised at the relief that flooded through him that his brother would wait for him._

 _The restaurant was silent, watching with stilled breath, so even though she spoke in a barely a murmur Seamus heard his mam's voice. "Seamus. We really would like to talk."_

 _Her tone was a confusing mixture of imploration and anger that immediately made it a struggle for Seamus to turn and meet her gaze. He managed, though, and it was to see her eyes wide and staring, almost commanding. It was that command that urged Seamus to his own feet._

 _"There's nothing wrong with me, Mam," he managed to stutter out. He could hear his voice wavering and could do nothing to stop it. "I haven't got a problem and I… I'm not going to change just because you want me to. I'm –" He had to bite his tongue to withhold the apology that threatened to spill forth._ I'm sorry? _Seamus didn't have anything to be sorry for. If his time with Eoghan over the past weeks, the acceptance of Dean the previous year and Caitlin and Aimee over the holidays, had been any indication, it was that he shouldn't be sorry._

 _And he wasn't. Not really. Just… regretful._

 _Without another glance towards his parents, Seamus turned and started towards the door. As soon as was at Eoghan's side, his brother looped an arm around his neck in a one-armed hug. They left the restaurant together._

Seamus shook his head as he finally caught up to Eoghan and realised what shop he'd stopped outside of. The fluorescent, sparkling letters of 'Ka-Boom' erupted between colours as he watched, vibrant and as vivid as the fireworks it sold. A new store, it had been in its early days the previous Christmas when Seamus had stayed with Eoghan.

To say that the fireworks had brightened up their otherwise sombre Christmas would be an understatement. Seamus had always liked explosions, but lighting them himself as his mam hadn't ever let him do? That was something else entirely.

Eoghan led him inside to the sound of a bell that exploded like a firecracker. A joke, naturally, but Seamus had still jumped the first time he'd heard it before grinning widely. He couldn't keep the touch of a smile from his face this time too. Just a hint. It was a little harder to allow to draw forth this time, but Seamus doubted he would ever not smile when he entered a fireworks shop.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen," the shop assistant said, a middle aged man with large glasses and a bald head that Seamus considered a benefit for one who worked with fireworks. He smiled invitingly from the counter beside the door. "Can I help you with anything?"

They weren't the only ones in the shop, but it was far from crowded. Fireworks were cyclically popular, frequenting Christmases and Halloweens and Guy Fawkes night in deference to the wizard himself. Seamus personally didn't think they needed a celebration to shoot vibrant fire and sparks into the air, but he wasn't complaining. Less people in the shop made it far easier to find what they were looking for than it had been at Christmas.

Eoghan smiled easily in return. "No thanks. We know what we're looking for, like."

The bald man nodded obligingly. "Sure. Just give me a holler if you need a hand, then." And like the agreeable salesman he apparently was, he left them to their own devices.

Seamus followed Eoghan as he crossed the room. The shop wasn't large, but the modest size wasn't cluttered either. Polished floors mirrored stacks of shelves each heaped with brightly coloured packages and tubes, spheres that Seamus knew to be Bouncing Boof-Heads, and intricate shapes from stars to donuts to rods as thin as a pencil and longer than his arm. Seamus grazed his eyes over the stacks, tallying them in their head and mentally cataloguing those he knew to post against the image of their explosion he held in his mind.

The Blooming Bastards burst into extravagant bouquets of flowers as big as a house, unfurling as they shot into the sky before retreating back into buds before descending. The Windchimes sung a soothing tune to the accompaniment of colourful musical notes drifting through the air, though far louder than their name sake. The Hare and the Tortoise Race exploded in a wash of whites, greens and reds to show the infamous race that dancing in a wide arc across the sky. Seamus remembered each of them and more from the previous Christmas and couldn't help but let his smile settle more easily. He'd love to make fireworks some day. That would be… it would be fantastic.

Eoghan stopped beside a particularly large shelf of oddly shaped crackers that looked a little like Muggle grenades. He flicked one as he shot a glance towards Seamus. "What do you think? Want to get a Bomber this time, like?"

Seamus shook his head, but more in amusement than denial. Maybe Eoghan's spontaneous trip to Ka-Boom was a good idea. Seamus had been in a very maudlin mood since leaving his parents at the restaurant. Maybe Eoghan had just gotten tired of his funk? It would be warranted if he had.

Stepping up to Eoghan's side, Seamus picked up one of the Bombers. They were truly fantastic, as much for their deafening sound as the immense size of the vibrant explosion they produced. Seamus had seen it before and he'd loved the overwhelming force of them from the first time he'd seen his dad light one when…

The wistful, sombre thought dampened his mood once more and it was a struggle to keep his tone light and casual when he spoke. "I thought you said we were going to reserve this sort of thing for special occasions? We kind of went overkill last Christmas – think we used our yearly quota, like."

Eoghan spared him a glance as he stepped to the next shelf and plucked a long tube from the stack to wave in the air at him. "Yeah, I know. But you like them, right? 'Course you do."

"But it's not really a special occasion, Eoghan."

Surprisingly, Eoghan's face softened. Putting down the tube, he started to Seamus' side and, surprisingly, hooked an arm around his neck to tug him into a one-armed embrace. "Maybe not," he said quietly. "But it's been a hell of a day, like. And you did well, Seam. Really well. You stuck to your guns like you _should_ do, and I'm proud of you."

It might have been a bit condescending. It might have even been simply embarrassing to hear those words from his older brother. But as though they'd broken something in Seamus, he felt an overwhelming upwelling of emotion flood through him. It was as though the thought of his dad from moments before had been engorged, expanding to lodge in the back of his throat and bring a burning sensation to his eyes. It stung, ached even, and Seamus –

Squeezing his eyes closed, he turned into Eoghan's shoulder. He wouldn't cry. He wouldn't let himself cry. It was stupid to do something like that, even if it did hurt terribly that Seamus' mam and dad… that they hadn't changed their minds. That they wanted to simply smother the 'problem' rather than come to terms with it. It _really_ hurt.

In the middle of the fireworks shop, Seamus found himself abruptly sobbing into his brother's comforting embrace.

* * *

"I just can't believe it, like. You've got to bloody kidding me."

Dean shook his head, grinning at him. "I swear I didn't do it on purpose."

Seamus glared up at him as they wove their way through the crowd at King's Cross Station. "Like hell you didn't. Bet you've been spending your entire summer lying horizontal or something while you get Keira and June to stretch you from both ends."

Dean tipped his head back to loose a belly laugh . The sound rung loud and clear, almost starkly discordant in the otherwise subdued atmosphere of the platform. No one else was laughing. Few enough people were even smiling; the story of the collapsed bridge printed across the papers that morning – magically collapsed, it had been discovered – weighed heavily upon everyone's minds alongside every other fear and mounting foreboding. Seamus couldn't really blame the families of his fellow students. Leaving home at such a time was kind of terrifying. Who knew what would become of their families when they left?

As a result, Seamus had forcibly attempted to shunt his own melancholy aside. Dean, by unspoken consent and without even discussing doing so, had done just the same. He'd even adopted an overly bright expression, a wide smile, when he'd said goodbye to his mam moments before. Seamus had seen the slight easing of Mrs Thomas' distress in the face of it and couldn't say it surprised him; Dean's smile had that effect on people.

They were probably the loudest two on the platform, and Seamus noticed absently that their jovial conversation attracted more than a few vaguely surprised glances. Not that he cared. Honestly, it was just good to see Dean. They really hadn't caught up enough that holidays, even given that Seamus was staying on the mainland.

"I don't think that's how growing taller works, Seam," Dean chuckled. "And besides, it would be more likely that Millie would do the stretching than Keira. She's hardly off her Playstation these days."

"So you're not denying it, like?" Seamus said, pausing in step to jab a finger at Dean triumphantly. "I knew it."

"I don't think manually stretching someone makes them taller. I'm just naturally tall."

"Naturally a giant, you mean. I swear, you'd be taller than Ron these days."

"Haven't I always been?" Dean raised an eyebrow. He hadn't stopped smiling for a second since Seamus had all but tackled him to the ground in a hug barely ten minutes before. Seamus quite liked that fact, even as he maintained the farce of his indignation. "Do you think I'm actually a full foot taller than you now? I think I might be."

Seamus stared up at him for a moment – or glared, but it wasn't a real glare so he didn't think it counted – before jabbing a fist into Dean's gut. The air _whoosh_ ed out of Dean with a mirthful "Ow" before they were both snickering to one another.

"You have a killer punch on you, has anyone ever told you that?" Dean said as he straightened, rubbing his belly. "I swear it's gotten worse."

"Worse? I think you mean better, like." Seamus grasped the handle of his trunk once more and continued leading the way to the nearest train carriage. "I've been living with Eoghan for the whole summer. What do you expect?"

"What, so you beat the crap out of each other routinely, then?"

"'Course we do. We're brothers," Seamus said by way of explanation. It was true, for they tussled on frequent occasions, if never sincerely. Besides, Eoghan almost always won. Those few inches of height… Seamus was sincerely regretting his lack of growth that summer.

"I've never done that with any of my sisters," Dean said dubiously, shaking his head as they climbed the carriage steps. "Honestly, I'd almost think you didn't like each other except for the fact that I know you do."

Seamus grinned in reply. What could he say? Dean was right in that regard. In Seamus' opinion, Eoghan was about the best person in the world, and not just because he was his brother. At the thought, rising onto his toes – for even on the steps of the carriage it was a bit of a struggle to see over the scattered heads of the crowds – he sought the waiting figure of his brother as he knew would be looking towards him.

Eoghan was. Of course he was, because even though Seamus said it was unnecessary, that he was more than capable of getting onto the train himself, Eoghan wanted to 'see him off'. It was as though he felt obliged to fill the role of Seamus' parents in their absence, though neither said as much. Seamus didn't say that the hurt he felt for his mam and dad's absence was soothed just a little by Eoghan's presence either.

Eoghan really was the best.

He wasn't standing too far away, so when Seamus raised a hand to wave farewell Eoghan saw him immediately and raised his own in reply. It was the hand that held the modified Roman candle that Seamus had given him as he'd said goodbye earlier. He waved it like a flag and Seamus couldn't help but grin.

In Gaelic, for in relatively private – or illegal – matters they'd decided to do so, Seamus cupped his hands around his mouth and called to him. "Make sure you tell me how it goes! I want a full account, like, alright?"

Eoghan's grin widened and he shook his head as he called a reply in kind. "Of course, pyro. I'm looking forward to it." Then he pointed the firework at Seamus and adopted a chiding expression. "Though I expect you to write me and tell me that you've kept your promise of no explosions your first week back."

"You're no fun at all," Seamus replied, before sparing Eoghan another wave and turning to continue his climb back up the carriage steps.

Dean was waiting for him just inside, wearing a strange kind of frown. "What was that?" He asked, tone a little incredulous.

Seamus felt his smile grow mischievous. "I may or may not have been experimenting with fireworks over the summer. Maybe."

Dean blinked, eyebrows rising. "You what?" Then he blinked again and shook his head. "Okay, we'll revisit that. I actually meant the – the thing."

Seamus frowned, confused. "Thing?"

Waving a hand at Seamus in what was probably supposed to be an explanatory gesture but only confused him further, Dean frowned once more. "That _thing_. The 'plee-ask-er' and all that. What was that?"

Seamus stared for a moment before understanding dawned. He felt himself grinning. "Oh, yeah, me and Eoghan – or Eoghan, actually. He learnt Gaelic when he was little and then taught me most of what he knew, like, so whenever we're talking in private or whatever we just use that."

Dean stared at Seamus blankly. He was apparently so stupefied for whatever reason that he didn't notice what looked to be a second year girl trying to slip past him down the hallway until she was practically climbing over his trunk. Then he blinked and slowly shook his head in something of a stupor as he moved it. "You speak Gaelic?"

"I already told you that, like. And it's _pléascadh_ , by the way."

"You never told me that."

"Yes, I did. I told you –"

"I swear you've never told me you can speak Gaelic." Dean's stupefaction hadn't faded even slightly and Seamus found himself growing more than a little confused once more.

Frowning, Seamus stepped aside to let another younger student slip past him, shunting his trunk into the sidelong cabin as he did. "What's wrong with that?" He couldn't fathom what concerned Dean so much but he didn't like him appearing so… what? Put out?

Dean slowly shook his head. "Nothing's _wrong_ with it," he said slowly. "I just… I never knew." His frown settled a little more deeply, almost concerned. "That seems to happen quite a bit, actually."

"What does?" Seamus asked.

"I just find things out about you – big things – that you haven't told me."

Seamus was a little stunned himself now. Big things? What big things had he kept from Dean? He couldn't really think of any off the top of his head, except – well, there was the fact that he was gay, but no one had known except Wayne, Hannah and maybe Susan until the previous year. Did it bother Dean?

A touch of nausea tightened Seamus' gut but he thrust it aside. No, it didn't. He knew it didn't. Dean was one of the people who were fine with it. Blessedly, heart-stopping in its relief because Seamus didn't known how he would have coped if he wasn't. It wasn't just because Seamus had fancied him since the moment he'd even realised he saw other boys that way.

But what was all this about? Was Dean really so disgruntled about Seamus not telling him? He'd truly thought he'd mentioned it; it wasn't as though Seamus was intentionally hiding the fact. "Knowing Gaelic isn't a big thing, Dean," he muttered, frowning himself. "But if it bothers you, like, you can just ask me." He shrugged. "I don't really mind telling you anything, so if you don't know it's probably just 'cause I forgot to tell you."

Dean stared at Seamus for a moment, his expression intent as though he was reading Seamus' face like an open book. He probably was at that; Seamus wouldn't put it past him. Whatever he saw apparently satisfied him for he smiled a moment later. It was the warm, perfect smile that Seamus had realised he'd loved nearly a whole two years ago. "Thanks, Seam," he said. Then, turning to pick up his trunk, they started down the gradually filling hallway once more. "Now, tell me about this fireworks thing."

Seamus, relieved for the change of subject as much as for the subject they jumped to itself, immediately launched into his tales of his summer exploits. Of how he and Eoghan had been talking about his prospects and how he really, _really_ wanted to try experimenting with magical fireworks because after the previous Christmas, after what he'd seen of Fred and George Weasley's work, he was hooked.

Dean listened with a steadily widening smile of attentiveness, shaking his head as Seamus dropped his voice for a moment and explained the nature of the Roman candle he'd given to Eoghan. "I just hope he doesn't blow his head off with it, like."

Dean laughed. "You think he might? Isn't that a little dangerous?"

Seamus was about to reply before he registered those inside the cabin they just passed. Backtracking slightly, he found himself grinning and waving enthusiastically at the Hufflepuffs inside. The door was shunted open and he was bustling inside a moment later.

"Hey, everyone! Don't suppose you mind us crashing your cabin?"

All of them – Wayne, Susan and Hannah – turned beaming smiles upon him as he entered. Seamus didn't really have to ask; their welcome was apparent enough.

Hannah replied anyway, waving them inside and immediately rising to her feet to assist with hauling Seamus' and Dean's trunks into the overhead lockers. "Of course not. We were waiting for you, actually."

Seamus paused for a second at the sudden warmth that washed through him at Hannah's words. How different that was to the previous year when Seamus had forced them, if unwillingly, to sit apart. He was truly lucky that they'd all forgiven him as readily as they had.

With Dean at his side, they made short work of settling into the cabin to the sound of exchanged welcomes and askance of "How was your summer?" Seamus automatically took the seat beside Wayne as they fell into discussion. He'd seen Wayne several times over the break but always found something to talk about with him. Despite the fact that they weren't dating anymore and hadn't been for over a year, Seamus in many ways still felt the closest to Wayne out of the Hufflepuffs. Which was strange considering they were so different. Maybe the fact that Wayne quite often seemed content to simply listen as Seamus chattered his ear off had something to do with it. Lightly and superficially that summer, because no one really wanted to talk about any of the problems occurring in the Wizarding world at present, even if they did play on every mind.

Seamus didn't notice the time passing, or how quickly it passed, until the train tooted deafeningly. Smoke wafted thickly outside of their cabin's window and muffled calls of farewell sounded from the platform. Seamus paused in his discussion with Wayne to glance out upon the sea of faces that were just a little tighter, just a little more fearful, than usual. He wondered if Eoghan was worried too.

"I should probably go and find Ginny."

At the sound of Dean's words, Seamus glanced towards him. He was gazing a little distractedly through the window too before slowly rising to his feet. There wasn't quite reluctance in his words, but Seamus wasn't sure someone should sound quite so blasé about meeting their girlfriend as Dean did. Maybe that was just how Dean was? Seamus wouldn't put it past him, even if he might secretly hope it was otherwise.

"Are you going to be sitting with her, then?" Wayne asked curiously.

"We only wonder because we can rent your seat out if you are," Susan said with a grin.

"I didn't mean that, actually," Wayne corrected. "Not everyone is entirely mercenary, Susan."

"Yes, but not everyone is as kind-hearted as you are, Wayne."

Dean smiled at their exchange as he shook his head before replying. "No, I doubt it. We just promised to meet up is all. I haven't seen her for a about a week so…" Shrugging, he turned from the cabin and, with a brief wave of farewell, disappeared into the hallway beyond.

Seamus found himself staring after him. He wasn't upset, but… maybe he felt a little saddened. Or at least he wasn't upset anymore. It had been one of the greatest struggles Seamus had faced trying to keep himself composed, to even appear happy for Dean, when he'd told him on the train trip at the end of the previous year than Ginny had asked him out. Seamus hadn't really held any hopes that anything would become of his own feelings, but it still stung that Dean was dating someone else.

It stung a lot, actually. Probably more than just a sting.

He'd tried to be supportive. Despite the urge to bad-mouth Ginny, to profess that she 'wasn't right for him' and that they should break up, Seamus tried. He owed Dean that much after the support he'd given Seamus the previous year, and even without that, Seamus couldn't in all sincerity back his thoughts. Ginny really was a nice person, and if anyone deserved Dean it was probably her.

Seamus only wished that the greater part of his mind believed that as much as his very subdued logical side did. It would certainly be easier to suffer through Dean's explanations of their meeting over the summer with an encouraging smile if he did.

"Are you alright?" Wayne asked at his side, shaking Seamus from his reverie.

Turning towards him, Seamus noticed not only Wayne but Susan and Hannah staring at him too. There was more than a hint of sympathy to their expressions and Seamus knew without having to be told, without Wayne having told him weeks ago that "They kind of guessed," that every one of them was aware of his feelings for Dean. Just as much as Wayne was.

Adopting a smile that he hoped appeared genuine, Seamus smiled. "Yeah, I'm fine. Nothing for it, like, right?"

"Have you thought about telling him?" Hannah asked tentatively.

Seamus shook his head. "No way. I don't want to weird him out."

"I don't think you'd weird him out," Wayne said quietly. The soft smile he offered Seamus was entirely empathetic. "In a lot of ways, I think it makes it easier when you just tell the person you like how much you like them."

Seamus felt a now-familiar flame of guilt spark within him at Wayne's words. Wayne was truly one of the nicest people Seamus had even met, and not only because he was so compassionate and kind to absolutely everyone around him. He was genuinely considerate too, understanding and far too lenient. If Seamus didn't like Dean as much as he did – and the incident with his family the summer before fifth year hadn't happened – then he would surely date Wayne in a heartbeat if he'd take him back. As it was, however, he didn't think it was quite fair. Not with how he felt. Not for Wayne.

"Was that… how it was for you?" Seamus asked, the guilty spark flaring a little more brightly. He knew that Wayne still fancied him, even if Wayne had professed that he'd let any hope of anything coming of it die. Seamus more than hoped he'd find someone else; it wasn't fair that he was still stuck with his feelings when Seamus didn't reciprocate.

Wayne shrugged, his smile touched not even slightly by wistfulness or regret. "Yeah, I think it was. And not only because you agreed to date me for a while after it."

Seamus felt silent. He didn't really know how to reply, and not only because he didn't entirely believe Wayne's words. Seamus wasn't sure that telling Dean would be such a good idea, especially when Dean was very definitely dating Ginny at present.

Instead, Seamus turned with a smile towards Hannah. "So, you went to Belgium over the summer? How was that?"

It was such an obvious deflection that a fool man would have seen through it, but Seamus' friends didn't appear to mind. Hannah enthusiastically jumped into retelling her holiday with gusto, and the topic was effectively laid to rest.

Dean didn't come back to the cabin. Or at least he didn't for a good hour or so, in which Seamus slowly began to tell himself he should just accept the inevitable. _He_ hadn't ditched Dean when he'd been dating Wayne, had he? He didn't think so, but… suddenly Seamus didn't like the idea of dating all that much. It was a stupid concept, after all. Entirely stupid. For anyone.

When the lunch trolley trundled past, Seamus was on his feet simply for something to do. Nodding at Susan's requests and promising to filch as many Tongue-Burners Twisters for Wayne – he had a weird fetish for sour sweets – he left the cabin.

"Hello, dear," the elderly trolley witch said with a smile as he trotted down the hallway to draw up alongside her. The witch waved along the trio of third years as they hastened back to their own cabin already chewing on Pumpkin Pasties before turning towards him. "What can I get for you?"

Seamus made his order and was just handing his over a handful of knuts and sickles when a tongue clicked behind him with an exasperated sigh. "Are you trying to take all the Tongue-Burner Twisters?"

Glancing over his shoulder, Seamus blinked in surprise at Parvati Patil as she frowned at him, tapping her foot indignantly with arms folding across her chest. It wasn't so much that he was surprised to see her but that she was visibly annoyed. Almost angry, even. He didn't think… no, Seamus wasn't sure he'd ever seen Parvati actually angry before.

Sparing a glance to the handful of sweets he held, Seamus shrugged and held out a pair of Twisters. "Not all of them, but you can have some of mine if you'd like."

Parvati blinked and her annoyance shifted to disgruntled surprise. "Oh. Um. No, it's okay. I'm sure there's some left. Thanks anyway." Then she stepped past him and made her own order.

Seamus watched as she spared a tight smile for the trolley witch before the old lady turned back to her cart and began to trundle it away once more. He'd never paid much of a mind to Parvati and knew even less of her than Lavender who, though she'd largely ignored Seamus after fourth year, seemed to have a soft spot for him after he'd 'rescued' her from the Slytherin girls' bullying. Parvati, though, Seamus didn't really know at all. He didn't think he'd exchanged much more than a word or two with her at a time, and them mostly during their DA meetings the previous year.

In that moment, however, Seamus found that he couldn't really draw his attention from her. There was something about the way she was holding herself, the tightness across her shoulders and in the grasp on the Twisters in her hands, that made him think something was wrong. Seamus usually wouldn't care; he didn't have a problem with conversing with other people in the slightest but generally preferred to direct his attention to his friends.

Perhaps the Hufflepuff mentality was wearing off on him, however, for as Parvati stood in the middle of the hallway, plucking at a Twister and with no apparent intention of returning to her cabin, he couldn't help but ask. "Hey, are you alright, like?"

Startled, Parvati raised her gaze towards him. "What?"

Seamus shrugged. "You seem a little upset about something is all."

Parvati stared at him, fingers plucking and confusion apparent upon her face. "What are you talking about?"

Seamus shrugged again. He'd never been particularly competent at talking with girls – with the exception of Susan and Hannah that was, though they were very exceptional – and hadn't been terribly interested in doing so before. How was someone supposed to comfort them when they were clearly agitated? Was it the same as how he'd comfort Dean? Seamus didn't think that an awkward question or two, an offhanded offer of support and a bump of shoulders would really cut it for Parvati.

But maybe she didn't need that. Parvati was a chatterbox, perhaps as much as Seamus found himself at times if in a different manner. They had that much in common at least, though Parvati usually reserved her chatter for Lavender. Seamus suspected that if he got her talking about what was bothering her she might actually be obliged to tell him.

"I only wondered because you seem a little bit angry, like, and I thought maybe there was something I could do." Then, because her continued presence in the hallway suggested it, Seamus added, "Did you have an argument with Lavender or something? Is that why you don't really want to go back to your cabin?"

Parvati stared at him with eyebrows slowly rising. Seamus shifted uncomfortably in the face of her silent stare. "What?"

Slowly, Parvati shook her head. "Nothing, just… you're more observant than I always thought you were, Seamus."

"Is that a bad thing?" Seamus said with an affronted frown. "'Cause I don't think that –"

"No," Parvati interrupted hastily. "It's not a bad thing. Just unexpected. But…" She offered a small smile that seemed more directed to the Twisters in her hand than to Seamus. "Thanks. I guess maybe you're right."

Seamus nodded and waited expectantly. Parvati sighed, her shoulders slumping and she turned her big-eyed, dark gaze towards him. Then, as though she truly had just needed an ear to listen to her, it blurted forth in a sudden rush. "It's just that Lavender – and my sister, and her friends for that matter… they're driving me insane."

Seamus didn't even need to verbally prompt her with a question; the rise of his eyebrow was apparently query enough, for Parvati clicked her tongue and continued. Her Twister-plucking became almost vicious, shredding the tip of one of the plastic packages. "I don't know what it was about last summer, but all of them seem to have gone boy crazy. Every conversation we have is about boys and – I mean, it's not that I'm not, you know, interested or anything, but it's like everything else just isn't important anymore. Lavender seems to have an opinion about every boy in our year that she feels the need to remind me of every second we're together, and Padma started dating Terry at the end of last year so –"

"Wait, Terry Boot?" Seamus broke in. Parvati's gushing tirade had picked up pace as she spoke and she didn't seem inclined to stop any time soon. Seamus figured an interruption was the only way he'd get a word in. "I didn't know your sister was dating him."

Parvati, her incredulity at Seamus' supposed perceptiveness vanquished with her words, met his gaze with a wide-eyed stare of her own and nodded fervently. "She is. And it's practically all she talks about too. Her and Lavender – they both basically talk about boyfriends all the time."

"Has Lavender got one?" Seamus asked curiously.

"No," Parvati said. "Not yet, anyway. But I wouldn't be surprised if she got one before the end of first term." Parvati dropped her gaze back to the Twisters in her hand, her expression abruptly sagging miserably. "I just… I just want my friend back. She seems to have gone crazy and I don't… I mean, it's not that I don't want to talk about relationships or anything too, but I'm just not… I'm not as…"

She trailed off, and though Seamus wasn't sure what she meant to say exactly, he thought he got an impression. That Parvati wanted her friend to be as she'd been, for them to spend time together as they had almost every moment of the day before Lavender had gone 'boy crazy'. Seamus could relate to that. All things told, Dean was pretty good when it came to Ginny; he didn't talk about her, or at least not all the time, and he didn't seem like he longed to be at her side whenever he and Seamus were hanging out. But the train trip that year was the first time that Seamus hadn't spent the whole journey with him since first year.

Nodding his commiseration, Seamus offered Parvati a small smile. "I get that."

Parvati raised her gaze questioningly, eyebrow quirking. "What?"

"Dean's a bit the same. Or, like, not the _same_ , exactly, but he's dating Ginny now so he's buggered off to go find her somewhere. I don't know, he'll probably come back in a bit, but…"

Surprisingly, Parvati's expression softened. A very definite touch of empathy drew her eyebrows from their frown and she offered him a small smile. "It kind of sucks, doesn't it?"

Seamus shrugged awkwardly. He was trying desperately hard not to begrudge Dean his relationship, even if it sparked an ache within him that only intensified whenever he thought about him with Ginny. He didn't particularly want Parvati's sympathy – or empathy, if she could commiserate – because that just made it harder to ignore.

Still, Parvati seemed like she needed someone to agree with her, so he nodded. "Yeah, it does a bit."

"Are you left by yourself, then?" She asked.

Seamus shook his head. "No, I'm with Wayne, Susan and Hannah, so I'm not, like, alone or anything."

"You mean with the Hufflepuffs?" At Seamus' nod, Parvati's expression grew a little incredulous once more. "I kind of knew you were friends but I didn't realise you were that close."

"They're pretty cool," Seamus said. "And I guess it's good to have someone else to hang out with when Dean's off with Ginny, like."

Parvati hummed, lowering her gaze to her hands. A regretful expression drew her brows together and she seemed to grow melancholic once more. "Yeah, that would be nice."

It took Seamus a moment, but the idea dawned on him. Maybe Parvati had been asking for it, he didn't know, but he felt the obligation to offer either way. "If you'd like you can come back to our cabin with me. Only, like, if you want to, mind."

Parvati raised her gaze once more, her pretty face smiling a little sad. When she spoke, it wasn't quite as teasing as her words perhaps should have been. "Are you flirting with me, Seamus?"

Probably because of her tone, Seamus didn't feel his hackles rise defensively as they would have had someone like Lavender asked him just the same. He didn't even feel embarrassed, and for whatever reason, when he spoke it was with more truth than he had to anyone on the subject before. "Sorry if you wanted me to be, but no. I'm not. I'm actually gay, so…"

A smile touched Parvati's lips for a moment as though she thought he was teasing her, then in abruptly faded into a shocked flopping open of her mouth. Seamus thought she might draw away from him, perhaps even adopt an expression of disgust, but though she did take a half step backwards, her tone was more curious than accusing. "Really?"

Seamus, struggling with an abrupt feeling of liberation – he'd never so openly admitted to his sexuality before and it felt _good,_ if a little terrifying – shrugged with an attempt at casualness. "Yeah. I don't suppose it's a problem for you, is it?"

Parvati blinked, still visibly stunned. Her mouth opened and closed a few times before she managed to get any words out. "No, I – I mean, I'm a little surprised –"

"A little?" Seamus said, almost surprised himself at how easy it was to tease her as she'd expected him to. She hadn't recoiled in horror when he'd told her and that gave him more confidence in his words. "Try a lot, maybe, like?"

Slowly, a little waveringly at first but then widening, a smile spread across Parvati's face. She really was very pretty; even uninterested in her in that particular regard as he was, Seamus could recognise that. "Yeah, maybe a lot," she said. "I never knew."

"Probably because I never really told anyone."

"Have you –? I mean, have you ever dated another… another –"

"Another boy?" Really, it was incredible how easy it abruptly became. Seamus barely even felt the urge to glance around him to ensure that no one was listening into their conversation. "Yeah. For a little while."

Parvati shook her head slowly. "Wow…" She murmured, seemingly more to herself than to Seamus. "That's really…"

"Unexpected?" Seamus grinned. "Don't I look the type, like?"

Parvati snorted. "No, I suppose not. Though I don't know what 'the type' is really supposed to look like."

"A fairy?"

"Do you mean a real fairy?"

They both snickered and it suddenly became even easier. Parvati was smiling with true sincerity now and when she met Seamus' eyes her own sparkled merrily. "Sorry I said that to you. About the flirting. I guess it's just playing on my mind is all."

Seamus waved her apology aside easily. "It's alright. Fair enough, really." Then, out of curiosity, he asked, "Would you have liked me to have been?"

"Flirting with me?" Seamus nodded and Parvati sighed. Absently unwrapping a Twister, she stuck the end into her mouth and took an almost savage bite. How she managed it without cringing at the onrush of sourness Seamus didn't know. Wayne was like that too. Incredible.

Finally, Parvati shrugged. "I don't know. Would it be weird of me if I said I don't think so?"

Seamus shook his head. "Not any weirder than it is that I wouldn't want a girl to flirt with me, really."

"Yeah, but you're gay, Seamus," Parvati pointed out with surprising ease. Just like that it was almost as though it wasn't a problem at all.

 _Which it isn't_ , Seamus reminded himself. Eoghan had told him just that and Seamus had been reminding himself of that reality for weeks now. _There isn't a problem with it_. "Yeah, well, maybe you are to, like?"

Parvati seemed startled for a moment before bursting out into raucous laughter as though Seamus had just told a hilarious joke. He prided himself on what he'd said when she turned her smile of actual light-hearted merriment upon him. Not a hint of her prior melancholy remained.

Turning, Seamus beckoned her down the hallway in the direction of his own cabin. "Come on, then. Even if just for a little while, maybe you'd like a break from boy talk?"

Parvati hastened in his wake, relief and actual eagerness putting a spring in her step. "Yeah. That'd be great." As Seamus led her along the hallway, he almost missed her whispered words of, "Thanks, Seamus. Really."

Seamus pretended he didn't hear and Parvati seemed grateful for that too.

* * *

A/N: Hey, everyone. For whoever's interested, this is just a translation/pronounciation guide of the Gaelic :) 'A leanbh' is pronounce 'a lan-uv' while 'pléascadh' means explosion


	11. Chapter 11 - Sixth Year - Part II

**Chapter 11: Sixth Year - Part II**

Slapping his timetable down on the table beside Dean, Seamus couldn't suppress his triumphant grin. "Got 'em. I got 'em all, even Potions."

Dean glanced up from where he was ladling scrambled eggs onto his toast. He eyebrows rose as his gaze turned to where Seamus' hand was planted beside him. "You've already got your timetable?"

Seamus nodded, plopping down into the seat beside Dean and running his eyes over the layout of his classes. It was a pretty good timetable all things considered. He had a couple of free periods that day already. "Yeah, McGonagall's handing them out. You should go and get yours, like."

Dean peered over Seamus' shoulder, running his eyes across the sheet of parchment. "Charms, Transfiguration, Defence, Potions… I can't believe you actually signed up to Muggle Studies."

"Oi, I'm not doing it alone," Seamus said with a glance towards Dean. "You promised you'd do it with me."

"You know, I kind of feel like that's cheating seeing as I was raised a Muggle," Dean said, though he was grinning.

They'd spoken about this – about taking Muggle Studies in sixth and seventh year. Until the summer holidays, Seamus had been inclined simply because he was interested in Muggle technology and thought he could learn more about it that he hadn't growing up. That interest had been initially sparked by his dad and his side of the family, but Seamus tried not to think about that too much. He tried not to think of his family all that much at all, for that matter.

That avoidance had changed over the summer, because Seamus had made a decision. There were few enough ways that he'd be able to experiment with making fireworks, but Muggle Studies was one of them. Potions and Charms were others. In their final year of Muggle Studies, the major project designated to them was specialised and self-chosen. Hence, Seamus signed up for it. And Dean too, for that matter.

"Do you think McGonagall will let me do it?" Dean asked. "I mean, I don't mind so much just going to the art club to get a fix of painting so –"

"Dean," Seamus interrupted him. "You're doing Muggle Studies with me. I thought we already decided that, like?"

Dean grinned. They'd discussed at length over the break what subjects they would be taking, mostly because it was natural to expect that they'd be taking the same ones. Fortunately, they'd completed their OWLs with relatively similar results, so it was manageable. All Dean had to do was tell McGonagall his choices.

As Dean rose to his feet, Seamus snatched a piece of toast from the toast rack and followed at a quickstep behind in his wake along the length of the hall. McGonagall, a little way further down their table, was in the midst of handing out more timetables to the sixth and seventh years. As they approached, Seamus could hear Parvati's almost whining question.

"Is that handsome centaur, Firenze – is he still going to be teaching Divination?"

Seamus glanced her way and had to bite back a smile. To most, it would perhaps seem that Parvati was wistfully hoping that the centaur Firenze would indeed continue teaching for her own personal entertainment. Seamus wondered how many saw that Parvati was all but flouncing in her act; he didn't believe she was truly enamoured with the centaur anymore than he was. Probably less, for that matter, because really, he _was_ a very good-looking centaur. It had been something of a distraction the previous year, especially when he'd neglected the need to wear a shirt. Seamus had never wanted to attend Divination quite as much as he had the previous year.

Watching as an apparently crestfallen Parvati accepted her timetable – and flashed him a wink as she passed him on her retreat – Seamus followed Dean to McGonagall's side. She handed Dean's requested timetable readily enough with only a slightly dubiously raised eyebrow at his choices. "Muggle Studies, Thomas? An interesting choice."

Dean shrugged, his smile more than a little tongue-in-cheek. "Well, I can't really do art as a subject otherwise, Professor."

McGonagall appeared mollified by his explanation and spoke not further of it.

Their first day passed easily enough. Or at least with relative ease for their _classes_ if not for the amount of homework they received. Seamus was already groaning beneath the weight of it all, begrudging that Snape,the horrifyingly allocated new Defence professor, had given them a seemingly offhanded addition to practice wordless magic at every given opportunity and professing that he would be testing them upon their efforts the following week. One week to practice? It was ridiculous.

As such, it wasn't with particular excitement that Seamus took himself down to the dungeons that afternoon, grumbling to a commiserating Dean about their Charms readings because Charms was dead boring to read about, even if it was useful. Only for the smell of the dungeons to hit him and his poor humour to abruptly ease.

"What is that?" He asked curiously, sniffing the air to catch another whiff of the aroma. It was a strange smell yet oddly intoxicating; Seamus thought he could catch a hint of the clean smell of rain reminiscent to the storms experienced at the family manor, something very distinctly resembling the scent of Dean's oil paints that he'd taken to using the previous year and always gotten on his fingers. And something warm too. Smoky even. Was something on fire? It smelled almost as though a fire-cracker had been let off.

All told, it was an unexpected yet strangely alluring scent.

Dean paused at his side when they drew towards a table in the gloomy room, similarly sniffing. Though he nodded, frowned slightly in confusion to Seamus' words. As Seamus glanced around them, it was to see that they weren't the only ones to be so caught. The dungeon gradually filled with fellow students turning curious noses up into the air to catch the flavour surrounding them.

"I don't know," Dean said, "but it smells really good. Is Slughorn cooking something?"

"Cooking?" Seamus asked, glancing Dean's way.

Dean nodded. "Yeah. Smells like Andrew's apple and cinnamon muffins."

Seamus blinked, confused, for he didn't smell anything like that at all. Before he could say anything, however, Slughorn interrupted them from the front of the room. "Now then, now then, now then. Scales out, everyone, and potion kits…"

And their Potions class started.

Amortenia. That was apparently what it was, the smell that Seamus couldn't seem to flush from his nose even as they set to work following Slughorn's instructions for their first lesson. Not that he really wanted to, for that matter, for it was delightful and comforting and intoxicating all at once. It explained, he supposed, why he smelt what he did, and he couldn't help but glance Dean's way. Seamus wondered what else Dean smelled but didn't want to ask; it would be embarrassing if Dean asked him in return given that at least one of the smells Seamus caught was undeniably related to Dean himself.

Still, he couldn't help but contemplate it, even as they set about making their Draught of the Living Death that was to be their first practical potion of the year. Seamus wasn't anything exceptional with his Potions making, and it was a blessing that Slughorn had taken over from Snape so he didn't have to try to convince the grouchy bastard to take him on without an Outstanding OWL, but the Felix Felicis was a temptation. Not that Seamus had any ideas of what he would do with it, but it was tempting nonetheless.

The entire room was buzzing with focus by the time the first half of the class had passed. Seamus was the same and had just begun cutting up his beans when his attention drew to the open textbook at his side and caught. A glimpse of the ingredients list once more sparked his attention in an entirely different way.

Dust berries. And just below it Essence of Fire Maggots. They wouldn't be added to the potion in a combustible manner, Seamus was sure, but he couldn't help but wonder. He'd read about both ingredients over the summer; dust berries in particular were used frequently in fireworks for their dehydrating properties. Seamus couldn't help but pause as his gaze settled upon the printed words. The amount needed for Draught of the Living Death it wouldn't be volatile, but…

"Hey Dean," Seamus called quietly across the table. Dean was focusing rather fixedly himself and Seamus couldn't help but wonder what he wanted the Lucky Potion for. When he received no reply, Seamus picked up his stirring rod, reached across the table and rapped on the edge of Dean's cauldron.

Dean started slightly, thrown out of his focus. "What?"

"Do you have any extra dust berries?"

"What?"

"Dust berries. You always grab more than you need, right?"

It was a common error of judgment that Dean always made, and one that Seamus had noticed he did with his paints too. He always took far too many than he could possibly use for his purposes. Seamus could go and get some more himself, but with the way his mind was turning he considered he might look a little suspicious.

"Did you mess yours up?" Dean asked, nudging his chopping board in indicative reply.

Seamus skirted the table and snatched it up before returning to his own cauldron. "I didn't 'mess mine up', like," he said, turning to crushing the berries with the convex side of a spoon. For some reason it expressly indicated in the recipe that it had to be juiced with a spoon. Not that there was much juicing to be done; they were practically prunes when plucked from the tree.

Seamus glanced at his cauldron, at the ruddy colour of it resulting from the mixture of Essence of Fire Maggot that kept it a smouldering heat. He wasn't _supposed_ to add it, but if his estimations were correct, putting an extra five mils into it might just produce –

"What are you doing?"

Dean had paused in his stirring – stirring that Seamus should probably continue doing unless he wanted his potion to congeal on the bottom of the cauldron – and turned his attention towards him. Peering across the table, he rose onto his toes to look over Seamus' own cauldron, to better see what he was doing.

Seamus grinned. "Well, you know how dust berries dehydrate, like?"

The glance Dean shot Seamus' way said he knew where Seamus was heading without him saying it yet. "Seam. What are you doing?"

"It's called experimenting, Dean. Isn't that what we're supposed to do in Potions?"

"I'm pretty sure we're actually supposed to be following the recipe to a T," Dean muttered, but Seamus could see the hint of a smile touching his lips before he managed to conceal it.

Seamus' own grin widened. "Whatever. How often am I going to get the chance to see what became of a mix of dust berries, Essence of Fire Maggot and trinket eggs?" Pickett eggs are supposed to be pretty cool too; incandescent, or so the speculations of pyrotechnician Amanda Hubbleburst claimed.

Scooping up his berries with one hand and disregarding hopes of completing his Draught of the Living Death that day at all, Seamus peered into his cauldron. With his other, he added a teaspoon of trinket eggs, the faintly opalescent glob dissipating into the ruddy centre of the potion as it plopped beneath the surface. Seamus spared a moment to mix it with his stirring rod before, with a glance towards Dean who was still paused in his own brewing to watch with a mixture of amusement and concern. He spared another for Slughorn where he was distracted on the opposite side of the room before he slipped the berries in to follow.

There was a moment of pause. Seamus, more than learned in the art of exploding things or at least making them catch alight, to a precautionary step backwards. It was a struggle to manage while still maintaining a stirring motion of the mixture, but he did. Except… nothing.

"Well, that was anti-climatic," Dean chortled as he started stirring once more.

"Shut up," Seamus said, biting back a combination of relief and disgruntlement. It was probably good that nothing had happened in the middle of the classroom, but still… Nothing?

Dean snorted in his amusement. "No, seriously, I'm relieved. It could have been a lot –"

The explosion that erupted from Seamus' cauldron was more a product of bright, bluish-white light than one of any real force. Even so, it was hot, expansive, and Seamus barely had time to duck beneath his desk before the contents of his cauldron burst over onto the rim in a volcanic eruption.

A shriek sounded from the table alongside, but Seamus ignored it. He didn't glance their way for a second. Almost flat to the floor, it was all he could do to thrust himself beneath the table and away from any anticipated damage zone. Squatting, Seamus blinked blindly until his vision cleared slightly. A mutter of voices accompanied its return.

An ooze of something distinctly iridescent dripped from the edge of the table above Seamus' head and onto the floor before his toes. Fighting to slow the abruptly choking hammering of his heart in his chest, he drew a slightly ragged breath. It was always a little terrifying, the explosions, but Seamus loved it. There was a certain thrill to producing explosions. Maybe there really was something wrong with him, though perhaps not in the way his mam thought.

"Seam?" Dean called from above the table. There was very definite concern in his tone. "Seam, are you alright?"

"I'm good," Seamus replied and, skirting around the still-dripping ooze, he shuffled out from under the table. More than a few fellow students eyed him with a mixture of exasperation, amusement and fading alarm.

Dean appeared at his side the instant he crawled from beneath the desk. The worried frown on his brow eased into a roll of his eyes as Seamus found it impossible to refrain from grinning once more. "You're an idiot," he said, offering Seamus a hand to rise to his feet.

Seamus allowed himself to be hauled to standing. "Yeah, it was pretty cool though, right? Pretty bloody bright."

"Didn't you tell me you promised your brother you wouldn't explode anything your first week back?"

"That was just a little explosion, like."

Dean rolled his eyes once more, though his own smile widened seemingly against his will. "You are _such_ an idiot. But… it was pretty cool."

Then Slughorn, moving with startling speed for someone of his bulk, was at their side and with a struggle Seamus muffled his excitement. Slughorn frowned as he glanced between the two of them, his walrus-like moustache fluffing with a huffing sigh of breath. "Now, what's going on here, boys?"

Seamus fidgeted sheepishly. "Sorry, sir. Just a bit of a miscalculation with the dust berries."

"A miscalculation?" Slughorn said. Learning over Seamus' cauldron, the insides empty but for a sheen of iridescent scum, he raised a bushy eyebrow . "That must have been quite a mistake."

From the way Slughorn eyed Seamus, he doubtedvery much that the professor truly believed it to be an accident at all. If it had been Snape, Seamus would have admittedly been quaking in his shoes. There was a very good reason that Neville's Boggart had been Snape-shaped in third year; Seamus doubted he was the only one to fear him more than a little bit.

But for some reason, Slughorn seemed different. Seamus didn't know the professor much just yet and in hindsight should have kept the early days as non-confrontational as possible, but he _did_ seem different. The pointedly-raised eyebrow he fixed Seamus with was far from approving and yet it didn't seem entirely disapproving either. "Sorry, sir," he muttered again.

"You need to take care in a Potions lab, my boy," Slughorn said with a shake of his finger. It was definitely aimed at Seamus, too; apparently even Slughorn didn't think Dean had anything to do with the situation. "If you're going to experiment, make sure you keep those around you informed and pre-warned." Then, without another word of reprimand nor even a house point deducted, he waddled away.

Seamus stared after him. For a long moment it was all he could do to stare and blink at the portly professor as he paused alongside another students and peered into their cauldron. He turned slowly to Dean to see that Dean's expression was similarly incredulous. "Did that really just happen, like?"

Dean shook his head slowly with similar incredulity. "He didn't seem pissed off at all."

"Weird."

"Weird."

They stared at one another for a moment longer before, by unspoken consent, they simultaneously cracked into sniggers. Seamus didn't care that several of their fellow students were still looking his way, or that his desk was a dripping, oozing mess. It was funny, and it had been just a little bit fantastic, too. Slughorn was something of a fuddy-duddy, but he was certainly far better than Snape had ever been.

"Can I be the one to tell your brother?" Dean asked as he managed to pause his laughter.

"Fuck no, you can't tell him," Seamus said, bumping his shoulder into Dean's. "He'll tear me a new one."

"Eoghan wouldn't do that."

"Eoghan would."

Dean shook his head as he stepped forwards up Seamus' cauldron and peered inside. "You really blasted the hell out of it."

"Well, it's what I do, like," Seamus said, following his step. Not a hint of anything resembling the Draught of the Living Death remained.

"You remind me of the Weasley twins," Dean said a little absently, shaking his head again as his smile stretched widely once more. "What was the word you used for them? _Pléascadh?_ "

"Yeah," Seamus nodded. "But… Weasley twins?"

Dean chuckled. "Yeah, Ginny always says how her brothers used to spend most of their summer holidays blowing things up in their room at her place. You guys are like peas of a pod, right?"

Seamus felt his smile die. Oh. Oh, so that was…

It was a struggle to prevent the rush of irrational hatred for Ginny overwhelm Seamus. Even when she wasn't around she was still _there_. It was true that Dean was allowed a girlfriend. That he shouldn't have to put his best friend above that girlfriend just because said friend requested it. But just for a day it would be nice not to be reminded that Dean, Seamus' best friend and the person he'd realised he really, desperately liked for nearly two whole years, was dating someone else. Just one day.

"Are you alright?" Dean asked, drawing Seamus' attention from his immoral thoughts. "Does your cheek hurt or something?"

"My cheek?" Seamus asked, unconsciously raising a hand to his face.

"Don't touch it," Dean said, slapping Seamus' hand before he could press fingers to skin. Which was a good thing, Seamus realised, because now that Dean had mentioned it he noticed that it did kind of sting. "It doesn't look that bad but shallower burns tend to hurt more, don't they?"

Seamus nodded absently. He'd had more than enough experience with burns over the years to know that much. The shallower ones weren't as damaging but they certainly hurt more. "Yeah. Yeah, but I'm –"

"Hold on a second," Dean said and, skirting the table back to his side without sparing a glance for his own cauldron, which it was probably irreparably destroyed now. Seamus felt a touch of guilt for that but was distracted as Dean dropped beneath the table and disappeared briefly from view. He reappeared a moment later before Seamus could ask him what he was doing and circuited the table once more.

"Here," he said, holding out a little pot to Seamus.

Seamus stared at it for a moment. It was familiar, that pot, and had been for years. In a second, Seamus felt his throat tighten slightly. _And I was just pissed off at him and Ginny only a few seconds ago_ , he thought, guilty for a different reason this time. "You still carry Burn Cream around with you, like?" He asked, hoping Dean didn't hear the slight catch in his voice.

Dean shrugged, smiling easily. He had an incredible smile, all white teeth and perfect symmetry. "Well, yeah. You keep blowing things up."

Seamus took the pot from his with almost reverential hands. "Thanks," he muttered. The soothing coolness of the cream seemed to ease more than just the burn on his face.

* * *

Seamus thought he'd flown well. He wasn't a spectacular flier, but he thought he'd flown well enough. Sure, he was a bit out of practice, but that was only to be expected. He and Eoghan had only played against one another a couple of times the previous summer.

Even so, even acknowledging all of that, Seamus was still a little sour when Harry asked Dean if he could play Chaser in place of Katie Bell.

The incident with Katie was bad enough. No one wanted to see a fellow house mate cursed, and being the quidditch-team idol that Katie was only made it that much more profound. It left a bad taste in the mouth of anyone who considered it. That incident was made all the worse for being lumped atop the recurring incidents that arose in the papers almost every day of speculated 'Death Eater activity' and missing persons. That He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was alive and lurking… it was a terrifying thought. Seamus was happy to be within the safety of Hogwarts' walls, even if he felt a twinge of pain and fear rise within him at the thought of his family without. Of Eoghan. Of… yes, even of the rest of his family, though the thought twisted his gut in a different way.

It was never going to feel good to have to replace Katie, but what made it worse was that it was Dean. It wasn't even so much that Seamus was jealous – though, admittedly, he was. It was because… because…

"Cheers, Harry! Blimey, I can't wait to tell Ginny!"

Seamus watched as Dean raced from the room, staring at the afterimage of his wake. Blimey? Since when did Dean say blimey? Seamus felt an unexpected distaste lather his tongue when he recalled that Ron and Ginny both used that term frequently. What, so Dean was even talking like her now?

The happy couple had been going strong for weeks. That didn't mean it was always perfect, of course, for it apparently wasn't. They had their fights, Dean said, and Ginny seemed to have an issue with what Dean said she termed his 'chivalrousness'. Seamus didn't quite understand that; was he too polite? Too considerate? Seamus could see that of Dean; he tended to be the patient, thoughtful type, and had even been that way with Seamus more often than not. They were only friends, so what would it be like with Ginny?

What the hell was wrong with her, was what Seamus would like to know. Why would she have a problem with that? He'd seen her frown as Dean had opened the porthole to the common room for her as though it was a personal insult to her own door-opening capabilities. He'd seen her all but ignored him when he offered her a hand to rise to her feet seemingly for the same reason. She shrugged and disregarded him when he'd approached her after the latest quidditch match and offered to take her broom for her, too.

Seriously, what the hell was wrong with her?

But what really annoyed Seamus the most, perhaps even hurt him, was that Dean had immediately thought to tell Ginny when Harry had asked him. True, Seamus was a bit put out that it wasn't he who'd been picked, but he could live with that. He could. And he was happy for Dean. He really was. But why couldn't Dean wait to tell him either?

It wasn't fair. Seamus had come to the rather horrible realisation that he was wholly and utterly jealous of Ginny, and not only for the fact that she was stealing Dean away from him as a friend. Quite against his will, he found himself wondering wistfully what it would be like if he really was his boyfriend. It would never happen, but it felt nice to ponder the impossibility.

Seamus took himself down to the Great Hall for lunch at a slow wander, following in Dean's racing wake. He hoped that whatever excited exchange occurred between Dean and Ginny would be finished by the time he arrived. Slinkging into the Great Hall, Seamus spared a glance for the Gryffindor table and, seeing Dean in animated discussion with a beaming Ginny, disregarded his own table and headed to the Hufflepuff's instead.

Not Wayne nor Susan nor Hannah said a word of his arrival when Seamus seated himself amongst them. He'd taken himself to just that seat on numerous occasions in the past, and often when he was in a sorry mood about Dean – which was increasingly often of late given Seamus' resentment towards Ginny. Wayne shuffled over slightly to give him more space.

"You alright?" He asked quietly, peering at him with a tilt of his head.

Seamus shrugged. "Yeah, whatever. Just the usual."

Wayne nodded understandingly. If anyone could understand liking someone who didn't return their feelings – or didn't even know about it – it would be Wayne. Maybe it was cruel of Seamus to so benefit from Wayne's support as such when he knew that, even if to a lesser degree, Wayne still fancied him. He couldn't help it, though, and Wayne had expressly told him that it didn't bother him. Did that make it okay? Seamus wasn't sure.

"I'd say it's probably just that they're both playing on the same team now," Susan said.

"You know what it's about?" Seamus asked, glancing her way.

"It was a little hard not to hear," Hannah said. She offered Seamus a small smile. "He was kind of excited when he burst into the Hall. I think just about everyone knows."

Seamus nodded, turning his gaze down to the plate before him. They were serving jacket potatoes with cream, bacon and cheese in excess, but he couldn't find the desire to partake. Maybe stabbing a potato _would_ make him feel better, though.

"Let's talk about something else, like," he said abruptly, folding his arms on the table before him and turning back towards Wayne. "Do you still need help with your Defence homework?"

Wayne smiled, a kind smile as he always did, and obliged with Seamus' request. "I think I'll always need help with practicing wordless magic."

"Don't worry, we all suck at it," Hannah said. "Except for Hermione, probably. How is she at it, Seamus?"

"Pretty incredible, like she is with most things," Seamus said. Then he straightened up in his seat. "We could go and practice now if you're finished lunch, yeah?"

"Really?" Wayne asked, eagerness rich in his words as he lowered his fork. "That would be great. Are you sure you've got the time?"

"Wayne," Seamus sighed. "I wouldn't offer if I didn't."

"Oh, I'll come," Susan said, dropping her own knife and fork onto her plate with a clatter and rising to her feet as Seamus and Wayne rose in turn. "I've wanted to keep trying to practice getting my corporeal Patronus anyway."

"You still struggling, like?" Seamus asked. He cringed slightly as Susan directed a scolding frown his way.

"Thanks for that, Seamus," she grumbled, though her complaint was without heat.

"Sorry."

"I just don't understand what I'm doing wrong. I've got the Patronus itself and the happy memories and everything. What could I be missing?" She shook her head as they collected their bags and made from the Great Hall.

"Maybe your happy memories are too controversial?" Hannah suggested.

"How do you mean?"

"Well, you do tend to have a bit of a pessimistic streak sometimes."

"Hannah!"

Seamus snorted. "Susan? A pessimistic streak? But you're a Hufflepuff."

Susan shot him another frown, lips pursing indignantly. "You be quiet too, Seamus Finnigan."

Despite her words, even Susan joined in their laughter as they started in the general direction of the Room of Requirement. They weren't the only ones who used it for such purposes, Seamus knew. He missed the DA meetings of the previous year. He still carried the coin around in his pocket with him every day, though more of a keepsake than in actual belief that it might be used again.

Seamus was never more grateful for his Hufflepuff friends than when he had to face the reality of Dean and Ginny's relationship. It was what helped him to remember that the world wasn't abruptly turned against him once more when he considered that the absence of most of his family was only enhanced by Dean's distraction. It helped when he eventually faced Dean that first night and heartily congratulated him while Ginny stood practically joined at his hip. It only evolved when Ginny pressed a kiss onto Dean's cheek, a simple peck that quickly evolved into a full-blown make-out session. Thankfully, Parvati requested Seamus' presence with a mercy call and he was able to extract himself from their presence before it grew too messy and uncomfortable.

Parvati knew. Thank Merlin Parvati knew it all. Seamus didn't know what had compelled him to tell her the truth about his feelings for Dean when she'd asked in the first place, and he hadn't known whether it was a good idea to tell her, but he thanked his past decision each time she stepped in for him. Parvati was the godsend of Gryffindor sixth year, in Seamus' opinion.

Because of his friends, Seamus was able to live with it all. He could live with Dean seeing Ginny, with Dean disappearing for sometimes hours on end to lose himself in her company as often as he was at quidditch practice. He could even live with the fact that, when he saw their first game, Dean and Ginny played really well together. _Really_ well.

Seamus tried not to wonder if, had he been in Ginny's place, they would have played quite so well.

* * *

"Because it's really real. It's really, really real."

Seamus scrunched his nose as he withdrew his hand from Parvati's hold. Not for the first time she was attempting to convince him that Divination was an actual subject that deserved actual recognition because it was actually real. Seamus didn't believe it this time anymore than he had the last, regardless of the solemnity with which Parvati poured over the lines on his hand. Apparently there was a charm that could be used to enhance the perceptibility of the markings, but Seamus didn't think it was working particularly well. Neither his life-line nor his marriage line seemed likely to be as smooth as she anticipated.

"Sure, Parvati. Whatever you say."

Parvati stared at him with that excessively wide-eyed intentness that Seamus had come to recognise meant she knew he was as disbelieving as ever. "Just because you don't believe it doesn't mean it isn't true."

"Of course it doesn't."

"You can tell some really interesting things from palm reading."

"Right."

"Just like how I know that Lavender and Ron won't last forever. _I_ know, even if I haven't told Lavender."

Seamus raised an eyebrow at that before turning to glance pointedly across the room to where Lavender currently curled in Ron's lap. "Uh-huh. I can tell."

Parvati sighed but dropped the subject. She and Seamus had grown enough in their friendship that both had come to recognise when it was better – and easier – to agree to disagree over particular topics. Over the past few weeks and since Lavender had started dating Ron, they'd spent even more time together than their occasional companionship prior. For Seamus it was nice to have a friend in his own house he could go to other than Neville who had always kept largely to himself. Dean was as often engaged with Ginny as he was open to talking to Seamus.

Seamus had come to the realisation that he quite liked Parvati. She was a bit daft, had her head a little in the clouds, and seemed to think that Trelawney was something of a God for her still-to-be-proved-genuine Divining abilities. She was a chatterbox to the degree that when she got going it was nearly impossible to slip a word in edgewise and she had a giggle that was eerily similar to that Lavender had assaulted Seamus with in fourth year. He'd discovered that it was no less tiresome being two years older.

But Parvati's daftness made her genuinely good-humoured most of the time, and daft though she was she wasn't necessarily dumb. Except when it came to Divination, that was, but it was okay that Parvati was blindsided in that regard because it was kind of amusing to bear witness to.

She was a chatterbox, that was true too, but Seamus knew he ran his mouth quite enough as well. They'd come to an easy accord with their attempts at verbal exchanges whereby neither would expressly silence themselves but would instead simply talk simultaneously. Seamus had gotten very good at talking and listening at the same time. Parvati had too.

But more than that, more than all of that, they were comrades-in-arms on the sidelines of their best friends' relationships. Seamus found it relieving to bemoan Dean's absence or that, when they _were_ together, Ginny cropped up in conversation so frequently. Sometimes physically too, appearing at Dean's side as though magnetised. Parvati commiserated, sighing as she told Seamus how Lavender spent most of their before-bed discussions talking about Ron and those she was awake and out of bed wrapped bodily around him like a creeper vine. If anything, Parvati's distaste for talking about boys – or any kind of relationship for that matter – seemed to have waned further as Lavender's heightened.

Hence Seamus and Parvati spoke of other things.

Divination dropped – as Seamus at times struggled to manage – conversation turned to other subjects. Apparation was a common point of interest these days, what with the notice posted on the common room cork board for sixth years.

"I'm going to suck at it," Parvati moaned, slumping back into the couch. Their couch it had become where it had once been Seamus and Dean's as Dean had, whether unconsciously or intentionally, vacated it to be with Ginny. Seamus slouched at Parvati's side, one leg hooked over the arm and leaning comfortably into her shoulder. "I can just tell. I've never been good at Charms."

"It's not really a charm," Seamus said, idly kicking his hanging leg. He was very pointedly not looking towards Dean and Ginny where they sat across the room talking in rapid words to one another as though in fierce discussion. He'd found it was easier not to look most days. "It's more like… I don't know, like…" He trailed off with a shrug. "You'll manage. Everyone does eventually."

"Yeah, that's easy for you to say," Parvati said. "You've always been good at Charms."

"I've not 'good at Charms'."

"You can catch anything on fire."

Seamus tipped his head back to peer upside down at where she frowned at him impudently. "I think you're mixing up 'anything' with 'everything'. It's not like I do it on purpose a lot of the time."

"Yeah, but –"

"You need to stop worrying about it –"

" – I don't even manage the simplest charms that easily, let alone –"

" – and besides, we don't start till after Christmas – "

"- wordless ones. They're really hard!"

" – so you don't need to think about it yet." They both paused, studied one another for a moment before replying.

"I think it's a different kind of magic to just wordless magic." Seamus said. "Like, I don't think it even has an incantation to say silently, you know?"

"You're probably right," Parvati replied. "I don't have to think about it. Not yet, anyway. Yes, let's just think about Christmas." She paused, then jostled him slightly with her shoulder. "What are you doing for Christmas, anyway?"

Seamus pressed his lips together in thought. What was he doing? He'd been pondering just that for days now, ever since he'd first received the letter from his parents then that from Eoghan who had clearly been given a similar letter. Both he kept tucked in his trouser pocket at all times and found himself fiddling with them. Even thinking about them dragged Seamus down a little. He found himself absently raising his thumb to his mouth to gnaw on the nail.

"I'm at home for Christmas morning but we always go and see the family for the afternoon and have the biggest cook up you could ever imagine," Parvati was saying. "Honestly, I think just about everyone rolls away from the dinner table if they can even manage to get up out of their chairs."

"That's what Christmas is all about, isn't it?" Seamus said. His other hand had drifted to his pocket, fingers tracing at the thin shapes of the letters. "Stuffing yourself like a turkey, like."

Parvati laughed. "Well, it is in my family, anyway. We don't celebrate Christmas per se – it's more of an excuse to get together."

Seamus nodded his understanding. He found his gaze straying to Dean and Ginny again without his consent, noting idly that they were both frowning as though whatever they spoke of annoyed the both of them. He wondered what was wrong. "We don't really celebrate either in me family. I mean, me dad –" He broke himself off as his voice choked for a second before pushing though it to continue. "He still goes to mass and all, like. Sort of feels obligated I think. But me mam – me mam's side of the family doesn't attend at all." He shifted to bury himself a little further into his seat and Parvati's shoulder. "I don't know if we'll even be meeting up for Christmas this year."

"Yes, you mentioned that you might just be going to stay with your brother, didn't you?" Parvati demonstrated her daftness in one fell swoop by completely overlooking the delicacy of the situation. "I think if you can go and see your parents it's a good idea. I mean, it's always good to see family, right?"

She knew about Seamus' situation. Or at least she knew in the vaguest of senses. Seamus had never expressly told her that part; for some reason, it had been easier to admit he was gay, that he fancied his best friend distinctly more than just fancying, than it was to confess that his family could hardly look at him without curling their lips in disgust. Or most of them, anyway. It still hurt after over a year, the ache not abating even slightly for the time and distance.

Sitting up slightly from where he slumped against Parvati, Seamus drew his gaze from Dean and Ginny. They were arguing now, he noticed. He didn't know what it was about, but he recognised it when he saw it. Not that it was his place to notice but one did come to register the occurrences when they happened with regularity. "Yeah," was all he said. "Maybe."

Parvati likely would have continued, would have replied further, except for abruptly Ginny started to her feet with an overly loud exclamation of, "Because it's none of your business! I don't see why it bothers you so much". A moment later she was turning on her heel and all but storming in the direction of the girl's dormitory. Seamus wasn't the only one to stare after her; she drew the eyes of more than a few wary onlookers, as well as Dean himself who frowned in her wake and looked like nothing if not a scolded child. Dean didn't often wear that expression; Seamus hadn't ever seen it before he'd started dating Ginny. It looked strange upon his face considering he was someone who so often appeared mature beyond his years and wrought with unerring patience.

"Well, I guess that's them for the night," Parvati murmured at Seamus' side, and sure enough, after barely a minute of frowning in evident frustration, Dean rose to his feet and approached their couch. Seamus automatically unslung his leg for the arm to allow him room for a seat; it was a bit of a tight squeeze but Seamus didn't mind.

"She's angry with me again," Dean grumbled, frowning at his knees as he folded himself onto the cushion at Seamus' side.

"I can see that," Seamus said.

"Yeah, it's pretty obvious," Parvati added.

Dean spared her a glance before seeming to disregard her and turned to Seamus. "Seriously, when you were with Wayne did he ever nag you like that?"

"Like what?" Seamus said evasively.

"Like… I don't know, complaining that you're doing something when you're just trying to be nice, as though it personally offended him."

Seamus shifted uncomfortably, tugging idly at the cuffs of his sleeve. He and Dean hadn't spoken all that much about his dating Wayne, and it had only arisen as a subject for discussion when Dean had begun things with Ginny. It was as though he felt the subject was easier to voice now that they'd both experienced similar circumstances.

How could Seamus break it to him that, from what he'd seen, what he and Wayne had shared was very different to what was between Dean and Ginny? It wasn't so much the relationship that was different but those in the relationship themselves. Wayne had never been one to complain about anything, simply opening difficult subjects for conversation in a gentle and entirely benign manner, and Seamus had never really had anything of Wayne to complain about.

"I don't know," Seamus said warily. "Maybe."

Sighing, Dean slumped backwards into the couch. "I just feel like I'm trying so hard to do what it seems like I _should_ be doing but it only seems to piss her off. Why's it so hard?"

"Relationships shouldn't have to be hard," Parvati said quietly, any light-heartedness from their previous conversation absented from her tone. "If it's hard then maybe it isn't the relationship for you?"

Dean was clearly in a poor mood, for the frown he turned upon Parvati was unusually fierce. "Oh, and you'd know all about dating, would you? Are you an expert now?"

Parvati didn't say anything to that for a moment. She only shrugged slightly, the barest of motions, before turning to Seamus. "I think I might leave you two to it. I've got to go and drop some books off to the library." Rising to her feet she offered Seamus a wave. "I'll see you around."

Seamus watched her sling her bag over her shoulder before heading to the prothole across the room. She disappeared in seconds. As soon as the back of the portrait swung closed behind her, he turned to Dean. "You know, she was just trying to help, like. You didn't have to be a prat."

"It's none of her business," Dean muttered. Yes, he was definitely still in a bad mood.

"She was just trying to help," Seamus repeated. Then, because Dean didn't appear inclined to drop the subject just yet, he prompted him. "Is Ginny really pissed off? What did you fight about?"

Dean still didn't draw his gaze from the entrance to the common room when he replied. "The same stuff that we always do. That I shouldn't be so clingy – which I'm _not_ – and that I should stop treating her like she's incompetent and can't do things herself – which I _don't_." He grunted, sliding further down in his slouch and crossing his arms over his chest. "You'd think she just doesn't want me around at all."

"I'm pretty sure she wants you around, Dean," Seamus said, though it irked to say it. The memory of them snogging at the Gryffindor table that very morning presented itself readily enough in his mind. "Pretty sure, like."

"It's just that I don't…" With a sigh, Dean pursed his lips before finally turning towards Seamus. "What's up with you and Parvati, then?"

Seamus blinked, startled at the abrupt change in topic. "What?"

"You two are hanging out a lot lately."

"Not heaps, like."

"How come?"

Seamus frowned. "What do you mean, how come? We're friends."

"Are you?" Dean's eyebrows rose. "I didn't know you were actually friends."

"Well, we are." For some reason, Dean's tone irked Seamus. He was clearly in a provocative mood, wanted to vent some of his own frustration, but Seamus wasn't in the mood to diffuse that annoyance. He was rarely any good at it, but that day the letters in his pocket burned particularly fiercely and niggled him with a frustrating and almost painful heat. "She's pretty cool to hang out with."

"Pretty cool?" Dean's eyebrows rose further. "What, do you fancy her, then?"

Seamus recoiled slightly. Did Dean just say…? "What?"

"I just figured, you seem pretty close, and you always did say the Patil twins were the prettiest girls in our year –"

"Wait, wait, wait," Seamus held up a hand for pause. The buzzing of surrounding conversation seemed to ring in his ears. "Are you talking about me?"

"Does she fancy you, then?" Dean persisted. He was frowning again, as though the situation bothered him. "Is that what it is?"

"Where the bloody hell is this coming from?" Seamus asked, and even he could hear the slight hysteria in his voice. Dean was… "Why would you ask me -?"

"Because everyone's practically dating at the moment. I know you dated Wayne last year and all – I thought you were still dating for a bit this year, actually, but I guess not – but that doesn't mean you can't –"

"Dean," Seamus interrupted sharply. "We're talking about me here."

"You think I don't know that?"

Dean was very clearly in a bad mood. Very, very clearly, and though it was likely induced and enhanced by his fight with Ginny, Seamus couldn't handle it. Not Dean's frustration nor the way he'd chosen to vent it. He'd dragged Parvati into it first, but now he was asking _those_ kind of questions?

Maybe in the past they wouldn't have bothered Seamus. Maybe he might have even appreciated them given that they meant his romantic inclinations were being protected from suspicion. But this year was different. This year he was trying to accept who he was, who he liked, that there was nothing wrong with him and that no one's opinion should matter but his own. That was what Eoghan had been helping him with. That Dean had said what he did in the heat of his own frustration… it just felt like he was undermining him.

It was horrible. Seamus had placed such confidence in Dean after the previous year when he'd supported him and didn't think any less of him for coming out. He'd even become comfortable with him once more, was able to confide in him and lean upon him with the kind of comfort that surpassed even that they'd shared before. Now it all seemed crushed to smithereens.

"I'm just saying," Dean continued, and the way he raised his hands in almost mocking placation was the clearest indication of his anger that Seamus had seen, "that it wouldn't be surprising. You and Parvati are spending a whole lot of time together and –"

He cut off abruptly, words stuttering to a halt. That abruptness probably had something to do with the fact that Seamus had cuffed him over the back of the head. Not hard, nor even particularly sharply, but enough that it clearly startled him into shutting his stupid mouth.

Seamus didn't really care if he'd actually hurt Dean. Not in that moment, anyway. He was furious and almost trembling with it. Dean had… Seamus had trusted Dean with… and now he'd just said… For whatever reason, it felt big and painful and _something._

"You fucking asshole, Dean," he spat, lurching to his feet. "Merlin, you're so fucking stupid."

"What? I –"

"Just because you've got the shits with Ginny doesn't mean you have to drag everyone else down with you, like. Work out your own problems or ask for help or something. Don't just make everyone else miserable too."

To the sight of Dean blinking up at him incredulously, the knowledge that more than a few people had noticed Seamus' verbal explosion, he turned on his heel and strode from the room. The Fat Lady's portrait made a surprisingly satisfying _SMACK_ as he slammed it behind himself.

"Hey, young'un, treat your elders with some respect," the Fat Lady grumbled.

Seamus didn't spare her a glance before he took off all but running down the corridor away from the common room. He was smouldering and the silence but for his own footsteps helped to diffuse some of the thundering in his ears only slightly. Stupid Dean. Really, if he was so annoyed with Ginny, why didn't they just break up already? They wouldn't, Seamus knew, because they were as hot then cold as a broken tap; tomorrow they'd be all over one another again. He knew that too.

Seamus didn't care. At that moment, he didn't really care about their relationship. He just wanted to get away from the common room and Dean's words as they rung in his ears, the meaning behind them and the perhaps irrational sense of betrayal that arose with it. He'd tried so hard to accept himself and who he was over the past months that Dean's suggestion that he was somehow otherwise, that he was his family's definition of 'normal', even in the fashion of a passing comment, was… it hurt.

Stupid Dean. Stupid, _stupid_ –

Seamus caught up to Parvati three corridors from the library. She heard him coming and paused in step, turning towards him with an expression of mild surprise. "What are you doing here?" She asked as Seamus fell into step beside her.

Seamus didn't reply for a moment, mostly because he thought his words would come out more a growl than anything coherent. "Do you mind if I come with you, like?"

Parvati might be daft. She might be a bit of a dreamer at times, her head stuck in the clouds and her tongue wagging at a hundred miles a minute. And yet in spite of that, Parvati demonstrated perceptiveness that Seamus was surprised at. As surprising as, apparently, she'd found his own on the Hogwarts Express earlier that year.

She demonstrated that perceptiveness then. Parvati didn't ask questions. She didn't comment on what was wrong, because as was apparent from her expression she assumed. Instead, Parvati simply shrugged and nodded. "Yeah, sure. Whatever you'd like."

Seamus followed her into the library. The dusty silence within was somehow soothing and Seamus… for once he was almost happy to leave Dean behind him.

* * *

A/N: I am so, so sorry for the discord and lack of Dean x Seamus action, everyone. I swear it'll turn around. I'm just a massive sucker for slow burns and felt the need to stick to canon scheduling of events. But I'll make up for this. I promise.

As always, thanks for reading :) I love you all.


	12. Chapter 12 - Sixth Year - Part III

A/N: Guys. Guys, this is some serious angst. I'm don't believe that I'm by any means a fantastic or even particularly good writer but... this hurts, guys. And I'm really sorry about that. Sort of. Maybe a little.

Suffice it to say that any stupidity that made Dean kind of an asshole last chapter is at least kind of patched up. Enjoy!

* * *

 **Chapter 12: Sixth Year - Part III**

Seamus slumped with his head resting upon his forearms, propped on the windowsill as the were. He blinked slowly, detachedly, as he stared after the smudge of shadow that was all he could now discern of the departing barn owl. The Owlery was quiet but for the muffled scratching and occasional squawks of the owls overhead, the whispered flap of wings from those that returned from a night of hunting.

It was early, barely half-past seven, and on a Saturday there was no one else about. The winter chill and the darkness that accompanied it made for a hazy, dim morning, the promise of snow gathering overhead in heavy clouds. Seamus was rugged up d up tightly against the cold but he could still feel it creeping fingers through his jacket, the iciness of the frozen stone beneath his forearms pervading the thick lining.

Seamus didn't particularly mind the cold, despite its biting persistence. He didn't mind the silence of early morning either. Usually Seamus wasn't particularly fond of such stagnation, and would more often than not obligingly fill that silence with his own words. But that morning was different.

He was thinking. About the letters he'd just sent. About how his parents would respond and what Eoghan would think. On the edge of his awareness he knew he also thought about Dean, about how he would have to apologise to him for the previous night even if he was still a little angry for the situation. Dean might have been a prat but... he'd just fought with Ginny in another of their frequent and volatile exchanges, and even if his words were harsh, Dean needed the support. Probably. Seamus could realise as much now that there was a night between himself and his seething frustration. He'd avoided Dean for as long as he could before bed and then bypassed speaking to anyone to retreat behind his curtains. Even so, he'd known he would have to face the music eventually.

But that, all of that, was of secondary importance, at least for the moment. Seamus was more concerned with mulling over his own actions chewing over what would become of his Christmas. What did he want to happen? Did he want his mam and dad to be happy he'd decided to come? Did he think that Eoghan would caution him otherwise, that he'd think him an idiot for choosing to agree to his parents' request? Eoghan had said he'd support whatever Seamus decided to do, but would he support this if he truly thought him stupid?

Seamus didn't know. He didn't really think Eoghan would abandon him after everything he'd already done for Seamus, but the instinctive concern still idled on the edges of his awareness. He didn't know how he wouldd handle Eoghan leaving him. Not him.

The sound of footsteps on the stone floor behind him drew Seamus' attention over his shoulder. There was a pause just outside the doorway, the soft sound of breath puffing slightly from the climb, and then Dean appeared.

He really had grown ridiculously tall and almost filled the entire opening, his bare head nearly brushing dark, cropped hair onto the stone doorway. He was as rugged up as Seamus was, breath blowing little white plumes into the air before him, and the barest hint of colour touched his cheeks in deference to the cold. His dark eyes drew towards Seamus immediately and his expression seemed to ease from a tension Seamus hadn't noticed until it was gone.

"Hey," he said in more of a sigh.

Seamus stared at him for a moment longer before turning back to the window and slumping over the sill once more. "Hey." He wondered what Dean was doing here, mostly because Dean was the kind of person to take his Saturday mornings at a more sedate pace and use the liberty of the weekend to sleep in. Had he desperately needed to send a missive as well? Had he –?

"I thought I might find you up here."

Seamus glanced back over his shoulder. Well. That explained it. Sort of, though not really at the same time. "How come?"

Dean shrugged, taking a step into the Owlery. It was almost a nervous step, somehow sheepish. "You've been fiddling with those letters for days, you know. I thought it was a pretty good guess that you'd finally come up here to post something in reply."

It wasn't what Seamus had been asking. He didn't really care how Dean had known where he was; he was more concerned with why he'd come at all. Dean's frustration of the night before had clearly and predictably faded. What would have been more surprising would be if he was still angry; out of the two of them, Seamus knew he was more inclined to growing frustrated and enraged. Dean rarely did at all. Not until Ginny, anyway. Was it a good thing or a bad thing that he suddenly felt comfortable with expressing his annoyance? Seamus didn't know.

He also didn't know if he really wanted to talk to Dean. Not yet, anyway. Dean was his best friend, it was true, and would likely always be his best friend regardless of who he dated, but what he'd assumed the previous night was… for some reason it had hurt. Seamus didn't even really know why, only that it felt like Dean was going back on all that he'd promised Seamus in supporting his sexuality by all but telling him that he thought he and Parvati were dating. That he assumed they could be, as though he considered everything that Seamus had strived to accept in himself as to be only a 'maybe'. Perhaps it was a bit of a jump on Seamus' part, and he registered as much as he'd really thought about it through the night, but it still stung. He'd have thought that Dean of all people wouldn't push him to that.

Meeting Dean's words with silence, Seamus simply turned back out the window to stare up at the snow-laden sky once more. The barn owl had long since disappeared but Seamus stared after it anyway.

Even so, he was more than aware of Dean's shuffling footsteps as he drew alongside him. Seamus would always be aware of Dean like that, even when annoyed with him. Dean was a presence that was a little hard to miss, all height and long limbs and big hands that even then rested upon the sill at Seamus' side. Those hands were more often than not sporting a splodge of paint or a smear of charcoal from his increasing inclination towards his artistry. Seamus found he quite liked it when Dean had multi-coloured fingers.

"Who were you writing to?" Dean spoke into the silence. He sounded almost tentative

Seamus glanced up at him sidelong from where he still leant his chin on his folded arms. Dean stared right back down at him, expression somehow hesitant as though he wasn't sure how his question would be received.

Seamus could hold out on replying. He could, and a disgruntled part of him wanted to. Dean had been a prat the previous night and he shouldn't get off that lightly. He been seeking Seamus' company after his spats with Ginny increasingly of late and Seamus deserved to be annoyed with him for it for once. Except that before Dean's open expression, his earnestness and the unspoken yet undeniable apparent apology in his gaze, Seamus didn't think he could.

Sighing, Seamus drew his gaze out the window again. "To me mam and dad. Eoghan too."

Dean took a long pause before replying. "You wrote to your mum and dad?"

"Yeah. They asked if me and Eoghan would come to the manor for Christmas."

Another pause, then Dean asked slowly, "What did you say?"

Seamus sighed once more before turning his head to bury his forehead into arms. He briefly squeezed his eyes closed. "I said okay. I mean, like, shit's going on at the moment and… and I don't want to be, you know…"

"You don't want to be angry with your family when there's a war going on," Dean finished for him, quietly and without the questioning note that would suggest he was questioning his assumption. Seamus nodded into his forearms. Dean was right, after all.

There was another pause before Dean took his cue and filled the silence once more. "Why didn't you tell me your parents wrote you?"

Twisting to glance up at him, Seamus met Dean's gaze. There was a touch of hurt amidst a heap of regret and something strange that almost looked like mournfulness. It reminded Seamus a little bit of how Dean had looked when he'd come out to him the previous year. Dean had looked upset then, too.

Shrugging awkwardly, Seamus propped himself up on his elbows. "I don't know. You've been distracted, like, I guess. You and Ginny have gotten pretty full-on."

"Yeah," Dean muttered, dropping his own gaze. "I guess. Though she seems more annoyed with me at the moment than she likes me."

"I doubt that."

"No, she does." Dean sighed as he too leaned onto the windowsill, propping his elbows atop it in a mirror of Seamus' stance. Even leaning he was distinctly the taller of the two of them. Seamus couldn't help but think that the world was just a little unfair in its distribution of height.

They stared out the Owlery window for a time, sharing the silence. It was peaceful so early in the morning, the majority of the school not yet awakened. It was true that Seamus didn't often like silence, but he could get used to this kind. He thought he might even be able to wait in it indefinitely.

Except that Dean broke into that silence. Again. Surprisingly, too, for he was usually the more patient of the two of them. "Did, um… did Parvati know?"

Seamus glanced towards him. "What?"

Dean shifted in place. "About the, um… about the letter your parents sent you. Did she know when I – when I didn't?"

Blinking, a little confused, Seamus nodded slowly. "Yeah, she knew a bit of it. I told her when we were hanging out with the Wayne and them the other day."

"Oh," Dean said, sounded small and a little lost. "That's…"

"What?"

"I guess I just didn't realise you two were that close."

Seamus frowned. "If this is about what you said last night, Dean, it's not like that. She's nice, like, and we get on well enough, but you know I don't like girls like that. Or at least I thought you knew that."

Dean must have finally heard the hurt in Seamus' words this time, for when he turned towards him there was a thick upwelling of apology all but radiating from his eyes. "I know that. I do know that. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to come across as a tosser who didn't understand –"

"Even though you kind of did," Seamus muttered, perhaps a little unfairly.

Dean winced. "Yeah, I know. I'm sorry, though. I was in a shit of a mood after what happened with Ginny and –"

"You don't have to take it out on everyone else, like."

"I know that too. I do. And I'm sorry. I didn't mean to and I won't do it again."

Seamus regarded him for a moment, his awkward shifting to readjust himself in a fashion that was so unlike him and only emphasised his unease. That more than anything urged Seamus to push aside the last of his disgruntlement. With a sigh he scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Yeah, I know. I know you wouldn't really do that to be an asshole. You don't pull shit like that intentionally, like."

Dean gave a small smile. "Thanks, I guess."

"You're welcome."

"You know, I might have been an asshole by saying it, but I was actually just curious, you know."

Seamus found himself frowning again as he turned back towards Dean. "What? What the fuck do you –?"

"I just wanted to let you know that I was okay with it either way," Dean interrupted him. "I mean, not that it should really concern me, but I wanted you to know. That I was okay. With anything."

Staring, frown deepening in his confusion, Seamus blinked. "What the hell are you going on about?"

Dean huffed and his smile turned self-deprecating smile. "I mean that I know some people like both boys and girls and I wanted you to know that I'd be completely cool with you whoever you liked."

Seamus stared some more. "What?"

"Have you seriously never considered that?" Dean asked. "That you could like both girls and boys?"

"No offence, Dean, but I've thought about this quite a bit and personally I don't like –"

"No, I meant – I mean, not you exactly. I just meant people in general." Dean waved a hand about his head in a vaguely indicative manner. "People can like both girls and boys if they want. If that's what they like."

"O…kay?"

"You know, how it's not so cut and dry as just liking girls or boys, but that some people like both, so it's not –"

"What are you going on about?" Seamus shook his head bemusedly. "You don't have to convince me, like. I believe you."

Dean slumped back onto the windowsill, hanging his head slightly. "Sorry. I guess I just wanted to make sure you knew that I didn't care whatever you liked. That you'd still be my best friend if you dated Parvati or if you went back to dating Wayne."

Whatever anger Seamus had felt for Dean faded in the face of his confusing admission. He didn't know what to say. That he was grateful? Dean's consideration just seemed so… excessive. He'd confused them both in the process. And now, referring to dating Parvati _or_ Wayne…

"Well, that's not going to happen either way," Seamus said in an attempt at casualness. He raised his hand, propping his chin into his palm. "I'm not dating Parvati – seriously, like, she's just a friend – and I'm not going to date Wayne again. We haven't dated since before fifth year and he knows it's not going to happen again. I don't think it would be really fair to him anyway, like."

Dean nodded. Then he stopped abruptly, brow crinkling in a frown. "Wait, so you weren't dating Wayne last year."

"No. 'Course not."

"Really?"

"Why do you sound so surprised?"

Dean slowly shook his head. "I guess I just assumed," he murmured, an odd quirk to his tone.

Seamus frowned. For whatever reason, it sounded like Dean's supposition meant a lot more to him than it should have. He brushed the notion aside, however. Dean didn't seem inclined to offer any explanation for his confusion. He was frowning with head cocked in deliberate introspection.

The following silence was the longest they'd shared that morning, and even Seamus began to feel agitated for it. The sun was gradually heaving its way into the sky, though only the thin, glaring brightness of it struggling to pervade the clouds indicated its awakening at all. Seamus was pushing himself from the windowsill and turning to leave when Dean finally shook himself into awareness. "Hey, Seam."

Seamus paused, glancing towards him. It was easier now, despite the confusion of their discussion. The lingering frustration he'd held for Dean had faded as it so often did and left nothing but sighing regret and the understanding that it would probably happen again in its wake. Seamus would likely also become annoyed with Dean again, even angry, but that hardly mattered. He knew they'd be friends despite it all, just like he knew that, regardless of the fact that he was dating Ginny, Seamus still liked him. Still liked him a lot, even, perhaps more so after their discussion that morning. It had been confusing but heartfelt, the apology sincere, and Seamus couldn't help but feel a slight, almost discomforting warmth well within him for it.

"Yeah?" He said.

Dean turned towards him, leaning back against the windowsill and regarding Seamus with his dark, intent gaze. Dean was good at that; his eyes, unblinking and staring as they were, seemed to see so much. They pinned Seamus where he stood. "I was wondering… you really are going to see your parents at Christmas?"

Seamus nodded. "Me parents. Me uncails and aintìns and cousins. The whole lot of 'em, like."

"And you're okay with that?"

Shifting in step, Seamus scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Maybe. I don't know. I guess Eoghan's going to be there, like, and Caitlin. And Aimee's pretty good about everything."

"But you're not alright."

Dean said it like a statement rather than a question, and Seamus didn't deny his assumption. He shrugged. "I guess so."

Nodding slowly, Dean contemplated him with his intent stare for a moment longer. When he spoke it was with a distinctly decisive tone. "Can I come with you?"

Seamus blinked, starting slightly at the unexpectedness of the request. "What?"

"Would you mind if I came with you?"

He'd asked not if Seamus' _family_ would mind, he registered detachedly, but if _Seamus_ would. But… "Why?"

Dean shrugged, pushing off from the windowsill and crossing the short distance between them. "Just 'cause, I guess."

"But why?"

"Would you mind, then?"

Seamus shook his head. "No, I wouldn't, but –"

"Then I can come?"

Seamus stared up at him, confusion only mounting. "But… why? Why would you want to?"

Shrugging once more, Dean scuffed his foot on the dusty ground. "Because I want to, I guess. We don't really celebrate Christmas in my family – it's sort of a bit outside of Andrew's practice – so my family wouldn't mind. And… yeah, I guess because I want to."

"Why don't you go and spend it with Ginny, then?" Seamus found himself asking, though he was kicking himself for doing so even as he spoke the words.

Dean met his gaze with an unreadable stare of his own. "Do you want me to?"

"I…" Seamus trailed off. He really didn't know what to make of Dean's request. What did anyone say to that? "No, it's not that. Of course I'd want you to come. If you wanted to, like. It'll probably be a pretty shit Christmas, but still."

The smile that spread across Dean's face was a little blinding. "Thanks. Of course I'd want to. Besides, this would be the first Christmas we're actually together, right?"

"…Right."

Dean was all but glowing with delight as he stepped up to Seamus' side. Slinging an arm around Seamus' neck, he squeezed him briefly before loosening his hold a little. "Want to go and get breakfast, then? I take it you haven't eaten yet?"

Seamus shook his head and allowed himself to be all but dragged from the Owlery. The weight of Dean's arm across his shoulder, unshifting as they walked, was familiar to that Eoghan frequently wrapped him as such, and yet was somehow very different at the same time. Dean was taller than Eoghan, the draping of his arm more of a comfortable lean than a supportive hug. Once, Seamus would have been surprised at even that; he knew that Dean wasn't as prone to hugging as Seamus was himself and had long ago resigned himself to the fact that Dean was mostly just humouring Seamus when he threw himself bodily on top of him.

Except that had changed the previous year. It had changed the first time Dean had hugged him first, and then each time since. In many ways, Seamus was still growing accustomed to the strangeness of it, even as he worked through the confusing mess of feelings that rose in him as Dean, the person he knew he liked as more than simply as a friend, was actually hugging him of his own volition.

It was a warm feeling, and this time it wasn't discomforting at all. A different kind of warm to that Seamus felt when Eoghan offered him his support. As they nearly slipped their way down the steps from the Owlery, Seamus realised that, dreading and terrified as he was for the approaching Christmas, with Eoghan _and_ Dean at his side it didn't seem quite so bad.

* * *

"Don't feel embarrassed about it, like," Seamus said, patting Dean's shoulder with more amusement than commiseration. "Most people throw up their first time going side-along."

Dean, bent double with his hands propped on his knees, spared Seamus a glance that was faintly horrified. "How are you not heaving your guts up? I feel like I'm going to –" He cut himself off to clap a hand over his mouth and bend further to the ground. Fortunately, the mess already speckling the snow before him wasn't added to.

"Oh, he was," Eoghan said from Dean's other side. A glance his way showed Seamus that he was clearly fighting a grin. "It's just that we were jumping around all over the place last summer. It was either get used to Apparition or make a scene every stop over."

They stood on the road leading down up to the Kavanagh manor in the midday glare, the usual meeting point for Seamus' family over the summer as well as for their annual Christmas dinner. Snow was falling in a soft patter from the sky, a cool breeze not quite biting rippling through the air, and the grounds were empty but for the silent road upon which they stood. Seamus had been sickeningly nervous from the moment he'd woken up that morning – really, he'd been nervous since the holidays had begun – and had swung his gaze towards the towering expanse of the distant manor the moment they'd landed.

It was going to be awkward. Awkward and uncomfortable, and Seamus knew that of the nearly countless relatives that showed up for their Christmas do, a good proportion of them wouldn't deign to speak to him. On his mam's side mostly, though as far as Seamus knew the few members of his dad's side that would make a show weren't all too keen on having a gay nephew or grandson either. Seamus could already picture the disapproving scowls of his great aintíns and uncails, the disbelieving and openly disgusted staring from Fergus and the less overt but still disgusted mirror from Dillon. The frustrated and just a little desperate attention of his mam, the downtrodden and withdrawn hunch of his dad's shoulders, the sneer of his Uncail Niall and the repeated, "I can't believe it. I just can't believe it such a horrible thing. Such a thing…" from his Aintín Anna.

Seamus could see them in his mind because he'd seen and heard it all before. The memory of the summer before last... it wasn't likely to fade any time soon.

For that first second of their arrival, Seamus had been even more terrified in the face of his family's manor than he had been before. Or at least he had until Dean's retching had drawn his attention. The sight of him, even clearly miserably and rendered horrified as he was, had actually cleared some of Seamus' nervousness. It was just… it did seem kind of funny, despite his discomfort.

Patting Dean's shoulder once more, Seamus bit back his own grin. "It really does get easier. I swear. And apparently side-along is worse than doing it yourself."

"I don't care," Dean said, straightening with a slight waver in voice and stance. "I forfeit. I'm giving up. Hell, I'm not fucking doing the Apparition course."

"You'll like it when you get it eventually," Eoghan said. He wasn't even trying to hide his amusement anymore. "It's dead convenient, like."

"I don't care. It's crazy."

"Portkeys are an expensive alternative. Take it from someone who works with them everyday."

Dean shook his head stoutly. "I don't care. I'll fly."

"Brooms take forever, like," Seamus said as, falling in beside Dean, they started towards the manor. Eoghan took up step at Seamus' other side and it was a comfort to be wedged between the two people that Seamus cared for the most in the world.

"Planes aren't so bad."

"Urgh, you'd trust them?" Eoghan sounded horrified by the thought.

"Planes can be dangerous, Dean," Seamus said. "They can crash just from a faulty lever or whatever."

"A faulty lever?" Though his cheeks were visibly pale, Dean was apparently feeling well enough again to turn a smirk upon Seamus. "Yeah, because that's so much more likely to happen then Splinching yourself in Apparition. And more dangerous."

"Well, you can replace a lost finger or something if you have to," Eoghan reasoned.

"You shouldn't have to!"

Eoghan actually burst out laughing at that, his merriment rippling in echoes across the undulating, snow-covered grounds. Seamus knew Eoghan liked Dean; he'd said he liked him even more after how he'd responded when Seamus came finally out to him. Seamus had to admit he was relieved for the fact; it wasn't like he'd think any less of Dean or Eoghan if they didn't get along, but it certainly made life easier.

When he drew his gaze back to the rapidly approaching manor, Seamus thought he might do well to have it a little 'easier'. At least in one regard.

They chatted idly, easily, as they hiked the rest of the way up the road. For once, Seamus found himself the quietest of the three of them, letting them talk around and over him. He fell into silent contemplation and fought to quell the hammering in his chest and the gut-clenching wooziness that made him think he was going to do a re-enactment of the performance Dean had just pulled. When they finally reached the manor, Seamus thought it was far too soon.

Climbing the steps of the wide veranda to Dean's murmured, "It looks really different in the winter," they paused just outside the tall, ornate front doors. Eoghan turned towards Seamus, his good-humour fading slightly into seriousness. "Are you sure you're alright with this? It's not too late to back out now if you're not comfortable with it."

Seamus swallowed tightly. Merlin, but he wanted to take Eoghan up on his offer. They'd spoken about it at length, about what would likely happen, both in solitude and with Dean when, surprisingly, he'd asked Seamus if he could spend most of the holidays at his house. He'd showed up on Eoghan's doorstep barely three days into their break. They all knew what was coming and they knew it wouldn't be pleasant. Eoghan suspected, and Seamus agreed with him, that their parents would likely try. They'd try as much as they had at the restaurant they'd visited just before he'd returned to school. It was the only time that whole year Seamus had even seen his parents.

Seamus hoped they'd try, even if his hopes did feel a little desperate and resigned to his fate. He hoped it would go better this time than it had the previous attempt.

Shaking his head, Seamus attempted a smile that received none in reply from his brother. "No. No, let's just – can we just try and get it over with?"

It might not have been the best approach, to simply plough on through it and hope for the best, escaping at the earliest opportunity. But it was the best Seamus thought he would manage.

It was Seamus' Aintín Mags who opened the door. She stared at them in surprise for a moment, eyebrows shooting upwards, but then clearly got a hold of herself. When she smiled it with a warmth that was only slightly noticeable as being forced. Or maybe that was just Seamus' perception. "Eoghan! Seamus! Merry Christmas to you both. Merlin, but it feels like I haven't seen you for years!"

Seamus forced his own smile to surface as she stepped towards them, wrapping first Eoghan and them Seamus himself in a crushing embrace. She wasn't a big woman, plump in a homely fashion and no taller than Seamus himself, but she had a strong arm for hugs. Most of Seamus' family did for that matter.

"Merry Christmas, Aintín Mags," Eoghan said with more warmth than Seamus thought he could have managed. He was feeling rather nauseous again. "Something smells good."

"Oh, boys," Mags, chided, stepping back. "Nose of a bloodhound for my roast, I'll say." Then she glanced curiously over Eoghan's shoulder to where Dean stood quietly in wait. "You must be…?"

"Sorry, Aintín," Seamus said, reaching up to Dean's shoulder and clapping a hand upon it. He tried not to think of how it felt like his fingers grasped a lifeline. "This is my friend Dean. I think Mam told you he was coming, like?"

"Your… friend?" Mags said, her curiosity fading none even as a touch of blankness dimmed her tone. Then she smiled again. Still warm yet still forced. "Of course. Sinéad did mention it. Come in, all of you." And she stepped back, beckoning welcomingly.

The Kavanagh family manor was enormous and more than capable of holding the entirety of Seamus' extended family. Which was a good thing, really, considering that Christmas in Seamus' family tended to include just about every member of that family. Following Mags as she bustled through the entrance hall, they bypassed the wide stairwell with its deep emerald carpets, the walls lined in narrow tables and boasting vases and runners of a similar shade of green. The echo of their footsteps on the polished timber floors was drowned out by the chatter of many voices in the adjacent room, the sound fitting the warm glow of clustered candles, overhead chandeliers and firelight that beamed from the doorway.

More than half of the family had already arrived, that much Seamus could see as soon as they stepped into the wide sitting room that was as large as the Gryffindor common and leaked into the library that he knew would be similarly populated. A crowd of over fifty from what he could briefly gauge, of witches and wizards old and young, the very few Muggles that had married into the family, the children that naturally clustered together in suspicious huddles. Seamus caught sight of Dillon amidst the few cousins about his own age, Fergus standing dutifully and predictably at his elbow. A little further away, Aimee was, naturally, curled in a chair and pouring over a tome that looked too big for her spider-like fingers to hold. Her shoes sat discarded at the foot of her chair, feet curled beneath her sombre-coloured dress robes.

All through the room, the Christmas fever flooded the air. Glasses of champagne were clasped between most fingers, with bottles of Firewhisky and Brewer's Punch positioned about the room on every available surface. Deep, belly laughter and titters, gasps and exclamations and rapid-fire conversation passed in a buzz of noise through Seamus' ear. Such happened when so many relatives gathered in one place. Uncails and aintíns, great uncails and great aintíns, second cousins and distant relatives that Seamus had sworn for years _definitely_ weren't related to him – all of them were gathered for the one celebration of the year that, realistically, he knew none truly celebrated for traditional reason anyway. Considering that most were conservative purebloods who stood fast to their ways, it was a little hypocritical. Seamus had only been afflicted with that thought for the first time a year ago.

Mags turned to them just inside the door to the sitting room. "Make yourselves comfortable," she said, waving her hand in a vague gesture around the room. "Eoghan, help yourself to any of the drinks, like. I think your great-uncail Jon was having a go at the mixer if you wanted to brave it."

"Dear Merlin, spare me that," Eoghan said with a smile. How he managed so easily once again, Seamus didn't know, but then Eoghan likely didn't feel like the few glances that had turned towards them at their entrance were staring daggers at him. Or not so much, anyway.

Mags laughed then, surprisingly, she turned to Seamus. Pointing a finger and pursing her lips chidingly, she said, "Now Seamus, only the orange punch is non-alcoholic. I hope I can trust you not to undermine the privilege I'm giving you by serving yourself."

Seamus bit back on the almost instinctive urge to blurt out that if she should be worried about anyone it was her own son. Fergus was more than inclined to partake of any beverage on offer, and he seemed to take it as a personal challenge in his younger years when it had been forbidden of him. But the fact that Mags had even spoken to him in such a way, with such casualness and familiarity, made Seamus want to keep the exchange as positive as he could. It felt like he'd been thrown a bone. "Of course. I'd never think to undermine you, like, Aintín."

Maybe it was the smile Seamus followed his words with or maybe Mags really was attempting cordiality, but for whatever reason she beamed back at him with something almost as wide as her usual smile. She ever went so far as to ruffle a hand through his hair. Why people felt the inclination to do that, Seamus didn't know; Dean had said it was because it looked so messy most of the time that everyone naturally had the instinct to attempt to fix it, if briefly. Seamus wasn't complaining this time. It actually felt nice that Mags would act in such a familiar manner.

"'Course you are," Mags said with a hint of a smirk. Then she glanced at Dean. "It was lovely to meet you, Dean. Help yourself to anything, like." Then she was away once more, bustling into the crowd and disappearing in seconds. Seamus would lay money on her heading towards the kitchen; every Christmas, it was the domain of Mags, Seamus' third cousin Leah, now-chef-in-training Logan and their sea of ready house elves. Few others dared step foot between the steaming walls for fear of losing their heads.

Ignoring the gazes that were still resting upon them – Seamus tried to tell himself they weren't staring – he turned towards Dean. Only to find himself breaking into a grin that momentarily put his unease on hold. Dean looked thoroughly overwhelmed, staring around himself as though he'd never seen so many people in one place before.

"You alright, Dean?" He asked.

Drawing his gaze away from a passing pair of siblings – Seamus saw distractedly that the twins Jess and Jen had grown about a foot each in the two years since he'd last seen them – Dean turned towards him. "Are you pulling my leg? Surely not everyone in this room is related to you."

"Try the next room as well, like," Eoghan said, jerking a finger in the direction of the library. "That rooms bigger, too."

"Bloody hell," Dean muttered. "I swear I don't even know the names of this many people."

"If it's any consolation, neither do we," Eoghan said, exchanging a grin with Seamus. "I swear, half of them I forget every year." Then he turned from them. "I should probably make my greetings to people. It's expected, unfortunately."

"For you, maybe," Seamus said. He had never been more relieved that such expectations of formality weren't placed upon him until he came of age. "Sorry, but I'll leave you to that, like."

Surprisingly, for in the past Eoghan had always made a teasing show of indignation, he only nodded, Smiling once more, he bumped his shoulder into Seamus'. "Yeah, sure. I'll give you a heads up if I see Mam and Dad, like."

Seamus nodded, swallowing down the resurfacing nausea that flooded into the back of his throat. He was almost as scared to see his parents as he was to have any kind of confrontation with the rest of the family. "Thanks. I'll probably go and talk to Aimee for a bit."

"Sure thing. I'll keep you posted. Won't be long though, I swear." Eoghan's squeeze to Seamus' shoulder was heartfelt in its sincerity. Then, turning once more, he dove into the crowd.

Seamus watched him go. Feeling as though a supportive limb had just been hacked from him, he fought the urge to call after Eoghan. The sea of relatives that surrounded him abruptly seemed far larger. He didn't want to be here, he realised once more as he met his older cousin Katie's sceptical gaze across the length of the room. He felt like everyone knew about the bombshell that had been dropped the holiday before his seventh year, and given that very little stayed secret in his family, they likely actually did.

"Is this Aimee the one you said writes you sometimes?" Dean asked, drawing Seamus' gaze from where it was locked warily with Katie's.

It took a slight struggle for him to break their line of sight, but Seamus managed and shifted his attention to Dean. For himself, Dean still looked a little unnerved by his surroundings. Seamus wondered if he was regretting deciding to come as much as Seamus was. Surely he'd have a better time of it at home, wouldn't he?

Still, Seamus was relieved he was with him. He didn't think he'd be able to manage alone when Eoghan had to step aside to fulfil his obligations, not even if Aimee or Caitlin stepped in for him. Nodding, Seamus made a gesture towards where Aimee sat. "That's her. She'll probably be pissed at having her reading disrupted – I swear, she'd get along with Hermione so well, like – but do you want to meet her?"

Dean smiled. He actually smiled and it only looked a little pained. A little relieved too, for that matter, as though he'd been offered an out. "Yeah, sure. It'll be good to talk to someone whose name I actually know."

They bypassed one of the punch bowls on their way – the orange one, as directed, for though Seamus considered that something a little stronger might be fortifying, he didn't want to tempt fate – and slipped through the tangle of bodies towards Aimee. Seamus resolutely kept his gaze from meeting anyone else's. He knew he wouldn't be able to maintain the act indefinitely, but he could try. At least for a while. It was easier that way. He felt like the shunned son returning from his prison sentence for the first time.

Aimee actually raised her gaze at their arrival, which was unusual for her. Even more surprisingly, she wedged her fingers between the pages she was reading and closed it as she did so. Her words, however, were not unexpected. "Seamus. You're disrupting my reading."

"Much to my regret, like," he said and offered her the extra cup of punch Dean had the foresight to suggest they bring with them. "Can we sit down with you? I'd rather avoid the harpies for as long as I could, yeah?"

"And so you choose to sit with the Amphisbaena instead?" Aimee said, accepting the offered cup with grace and absolutely no gratitude.

"Amphisbaena?" Dean asked, taking his seat alongside Seamus as Seamus dropped to the cushion at Aimee's side.

"A poisonous worm-lizard with two heads," Aimee explained, smirking at Dean's blinking response. "You're Dean I take it?"

"I'm – yeah." Dean accepted the awkward handshake he was offered. Being Aimee, she offered the hand holding her cup of punch rather than that wedged in her book. "How'd you know? I didn't meet you when I came for a visit a couple of years ago."

"Yeah, I was in Dubai with me mam. But Seamus told me, like," she said, nudging Seamus with her knee. "You didn't say he was _that_ much taller than you."

"Shut up, Amphisbaena," Seamus said, though he smiled. They'd been exchanging letters every week or so for months now. If nothing else, he felt more comfortable with Aimee than just about anyone else in the room. "What's with that nickname anyway, like?"

"The work of our delightful cousin," Aimee said.

"Fergus? He's such a fucking twat."

"This one was Dillon, actually, though Fergus predictably jumped on it like flies on shit."

Seamus snorted and even Dean chuckled a little before speaking. "Where are Fergus and Dillon, by the way? I haven't seen them in years either."

"As far away from me as possible, like," Aimee said, pointing her punch in their general direction. Seamus followed the direction of her point but hastily dropped his gaze as he met Fergus' frowning eyes. "All my own intention, you know."

"Not a fan of them?" Dean asked.

"Is anyone?" Aimee shook her head. "I'm surprised they have friends. But no, I had to put up with them both enough when I was home-schooling."

"Yeah, Seamus told me about that." Dean frowned curiously. "Why didn't you just come to Hogwarts? Seamus said –"

"Seamus, the lucky bastard, is the exception. Most purebloods in Ireland don't go to school. It's a purity thing, like, or some shit. Seamus' dad just freaked or something 'cause he thought it was crazy that kids didn't go to school. So Aintín Sinéad agreed to it."

"I take it you'd rather you went too?"

"You could say that," Aimee said with a flat glance towards Dillon and Fergus once more.

They chatted in their relative isolation for a little longer. Seamus was glad for that at least. No one approached them, but Seamus knew that such didn't mean they were overlooked. He couldn't help but glance to the relatives idling around them and he knew – _knew_ – that some stared. That most of them stared actually. He felt like an animal at a zoo, and an ugly and dissatisfying one at that, for those stares were accompanied by frowns and muffled whispers more often than not.

Was it really so strange? Was _he_ really so strange? Seamus considered he had been lucky, blessed even, to be around people that either didn't know, didn't care or accepted him for the past few years. He'd grown out of practice with how to handle those that didn't; his thick skin had definitely weakened.

Their reprieve was shattered by the arrival of Seamus' mam and dad. Eoghan led them and the sight of him was the only warning Seamus had before they were upon him. All smiles, embraces, exclamations of "I didn't even know you were here!" and "Oh, are they new dress robes? Where did you get them from?" It was as though the meeting at the restaurant months before hadn't happened, as though what it had entailed wasn't relevant anymore. Seamus didn't know whether to be heartened or saddened by that fact.

"And Dean, it's so lovely to see you," Seamus' mam said, beaming up at Dean as he rose to his feet and accepted the offered embrace. "You've grown so much since we last spoke!"

Seamus didn't think it was just him that noticed the slight hardening of Dean's features as he returned the greeting of first Seamus' mam and then his dad. His smile wasn't quite genuine or as full as it usually was, his hug more than a little awkward. A glance towards Eoghan suggested that he suspected something was afoot, and the speed at which Seamus' parents in turn relieved themselves of the embrace was further indication. They didn't show it for the rain of questions they proceeded to pepper both Seamus and Dean with, but it was apparent. The only one that seemed actually comfortable for the turn of events was Aimee, who had retreated into her book once more. The traitor.

What followed was a superficial exchange the likes that Seamus had grown very familiar with from their single meeting and only slightly more frequent letters. "So you _are_ both taking Muggle Studies?" Seamus' mam said. "And art, Dean? Well, you've always been very good at it, like."

"Yeah, well, the art club is more just a kind of leisure thing, so I figured why not?"

Or instead, "Well, your dad's been asked to go down to London, Seamus, I don't think I told you? Yes, we're thinking of making a holiday of it."

"Oh, really? That's – that's really cool, like, Dad. What for?"

"Just business. It's not as exciting as your mam makes it sound."

"It is actually. Perhaps we'll get the chance to catch up with your mam and Andrew, Dean?"

Dean's face grew just a little blank at that as he replied. "Maybe. They're pretty busy at the moment though, actually."

"Even in the holidays?"

"Yeah."

Seamus couldn't help but watch Dean sidelong as he spoke. His words were just a little clipped, as though the suggestion behind Seamus' mam's request was somehow offensive. Maybe it was. Seamus knew that Dean was angry with his parents. He knew because Dean had directly told him. Dean rarely got angry with people and even his frequent arguments with Ginny were more grounded in frustration and disgruntlement than sincere rage, but apparently Seamus' parents were the exception.

Seamus wasn't sure how to feel about that. He didn't think it was necessarily a good thing that he felt a touch of something that was almost delighted well within him for it.

The conversation wasn't flying, and seemed to grow only more awkward despite Eoghan resorting back to his mediating role. He was usually so adept at easing social discomforts but this seemed to be the exception. As such, when the call for dinner sounded, Seamus had to struggle to bite back a sigh of relief. As one, they and every other member of his family flooded towards the dining room.

Dean stuck to his side the entire way, a little straight backed and rigid as though the conversation with Seamus' parents had left him in a bad mood. Maybe it had, which wasn't really a good thing. The thought of dining with his entire family rather than struggling for unobtrusiveness by sinking into the corners of the room with Aimee was more than a little daunting. It only helped slightly that when they sat Seamus found himself between Eoghan and Dean. Only slightly more that, across from his seat at the table and a little ways down, his cousin Caitlin blessed him with a radiant smile. Caitlin's smiles were like that.

Through the midst of chatter, the raucous racket of seating figures and calls across the enormous length of the Kavanagh household's primary table, everyone gradually sat themselves. Seamus kept his attention resolutely upon his plate, fiddling distractedly with his fork. Or at least he was distracted until Dean whispered in his ear.

"Seventy six," he murmured. When Seamus glanced toward him, Dean's was wide-eyed, his gaze meaningful. "You have seventy-six family members here, Seam."

Seamus couldn't withhold his instinctive smile. Was it really so astounding? "There's probably some missing, actually, and this is mostly just those directly related."

"Unbelievable," Dean said with a shake of his head.

"Is something wrong, Dean?" Seamus' mam asked from across the table. Seamus suspected that she had seen the distancing that Dean was putting between himself and Seamus' parents and was attempting to smooth the waters.

Dean shook his head. "No, not at all," he said. Then, in a very pointed and almost rude fashion, he turned to Seamus and leapt into avid discussion. About football, of all things. Seamus almost cringed at the deliberate exclusion, though he let himself be led into the conversation. It was easier than sitting idly and listening to the roiling, confusing mess of voices that surrounded them.

When the food arrived it was upon the upraised hands of a seemingly endless stream of house elves that Seamus' mam had told him once were largely borrowed from the extended family for the occasion. They barely waited for them all to be served the entrée – "Entrée?" Dean asked with a raised eyebrow. "Really?" To which Seamus had shrugged and smiled once more. "It's kind of traditional," he said by way of explanation and Dean only shook his head – before spoons were raised and heads bowed to sink teeth into the meal. Somehow, in a way that had never surprised Seamus because he'd always accepted it as normal, the conversation died none for the distraction.

Entrée was followed by the mains, steaming roast and buttered potatoes, salted beans and rich stew to those that raised a hand to request it. Throughout it all, the conversation reigned. Seamus would have to have been ignorant to think he could avoid partaking; he'd been a primary participant in just such discussions until two years ago. The gift of the gab, many had deemed it, and often not quite fondly.

His Uncail Jack and Aintín Mags were seated just a little ways along the table from Seamus, with Mags making an effort at a questioning exchange with Seamus on more than one occasion. Jack, apparently, deemed it beneath him to even try, though maybe the conversation he was holding with his sister Jane at his side really was interesting enough to be all-consuming. Seamus' dad was in a seemingly deep conversation with Eoghan across the width of the table, though when Seamus listened it was but a light-hearted and audibly forced discussion they shared.

Seamus allowed himself to be drawn into conversation with his great-uncail Rob, though Rob seemed uncertain of who he was speaking to and kept pausing to squint at him for a moment before diverging onto a recurring tangent of his neighbour's cauldron explosions. Blessedly, Caitlin drew his attention and Seamus fell into a discussion of the fairy gardens she maintained in South Wales and her latest expulsion of the less favourable members of their party.

Throughout, Seamus came to realise, the dinner was relatively lacking in confrontation. He could almost hope that the evening would pass without incident. It really seemed it might just do that, and for a moment, a bare handful of moments, he let himself hope. Seamus actually enjoyed Caitlin's soft-spoken words as she described her somewhat brutal methods, smiling as Dean stared at her in open admiration; they were all familiar with the difficulties of particular fairies.

"With a hoe, then?" Dean was asking, his dinner abandoned before him for his distraction despite the fork he still held. "An actual hoe?"

"The old-fashioned kind, like, yes," Caitlin said with a faint laugh. "Does it surprise you so much?"

"To be honest, I can't see you attacking anyone with anything."

"Caitlin has that affect on people," Seamus explained. "She's so nice most of the time, like, but she's got wicked aim with blunt weapons."

"Seamus learned the hard way when we played Putt-Putt golf together the first time," Cailtin smiled. "You were, what, like, seven or something?"

"Something like that," Seamus said. He glanced towards Dean. "I swear, she nearly knocked me head off me shoulders."

Dean laughed incredulously, and Seamus found himself chuckling a little too. It was good. Easy. Comfortable, even, if just for a moment.

Only a moment, though. It could never last.

"Ah, Seamus," Rob said, drawing his attention once more to what Seamus could only hope wouldn't be more exploding cauldron tangents. "I didn't notice you there."

Seamus bit back the sigh that threatened to spill forth. How many questions had he answered from Rob not minutes before and he apparently hadn't recognised him? "Yes, Uncail. It's me."

"Hm." Rob frowned, nodding to himself. "Haven't seen you for a while, boy."

"No, Uncail, I've been –"

"You fixed yourself up, then?"

Immediately, Seamus felt his blood run cold. Despite the Warming Charms circulating the room, the warm aroma of the dinner and the radiation of too many bodies in one place, a shiver trickled down his spine. "I'm…"

"Because I'd hope you had some sense knocked into you. Nearly scared your poor aintín to death when she heard, you did."

Maybe exploding cauldrons weren't such a bad topic for discussion after all.

 _It was always going to happen,_ a quiet voice murmured in the back of Seamus' head. _It was always going to come up_. And yet, like the deluded dreamer that he'd momentarily become, Seamus had hoped that just this once his family would overlook the situation. They didn't need a repeat of the previous year.

On both sides of him, almost simultaneously, Seamus felt Dean and Eoghan still. Both abruptly halted their respective conversations, and they weren't the only ones whose attention drew towards Rob. Seamus' parent, similarly stilled, slowly turned in his direction. Caitlin winced slightly, dropping her gaze to her plate, and Jack and Mags, Fergus and Dillon a little further along the table, all slowed in their chewing as though a bell had been rung in demand for attention. On Dillon's other side, barely on the edge of Seamus' notice, Aimee fixed a flat stare upon Rob that, had it been fuelled by magic, would have likely stunned him into a stupor.

Swallowing down a taste that was definitely not buttered potatoes, Seamus lowered his fork. "I'm, um… I'm sorry, Uncail."

"So you should be," Rob said with a frown at his half-eaten roast as he chewed like a cow munched its cud. "So you should –"

"No, he shouldn't," Eoghan interrupted shortly. He glanced towards Seamus before turning back to Rob. "Whatever problem Aintín Haye has is _her_ problem, Uncail. Not Seamus'."

"I beg to differ," Jack grunted from across the table. Seamus felt himself flinch before he could even think to suppress the urge. "It's a problem that –"

"Can we not talk about this, like?" Eoghan interrupted once more. "Come on, it's Christmas. Let's not fuck it up, please."

Seamus barely registered Mags' surprised start at the harshness of Eoghan's tone, the grumble of Dillon a little down the table or his dad's hushed, "Eoghan, language. Please." His attention was monopolised by Jack, who in turn seemed to have settled himself into staring with faintly accusing eyes upon Seamus.

Jack was… in many ways, Jack was the main difficulty Seamus had. He was the most open of his relatives about Seamus' 'problem', and his adherence to traditionalist pureblood ways often more closely than everyone else of his age group meant that he took the most offence. Seamus thought – hoped, even – that his prejudice rubbing off on them was part of the problem that Fergus and Dillon had. He hoped, even if it was a feeble kind of hope. It would be nice to think that beneath that prejudice they didn't hate him quite so much.

"No," Jack said. "No, I think we do need to talk about it. Sort this out, like."

"Jack, please," Seamus' mam said, raising a placating hand towards her brother as though in an attempt to silence him.

Unfortunately, it only shifted Jack's rising glare upon her. "No, Sinéad, it is. It's overdue." He turned back to Seamus. "This is a problem, Seamus, and we need to sort it out. It'll only get worse the longer we leave it."

The way he spoke made it an illness. A disease that, if left untreated, would fester. Seamus found himself shaking his head feebly. Any other time, any other issue, and he knew he would be spluttering in indignation and aggressively stating his opinion, but for this… "I… I don't –"

"Are you prepared to actually do something about it now?" Jack said. "Are you ready to actually put in some effort this time? Not like last year, I hope."

"Jack," Seamus' mam attempted, echoed by his dad's like-minded mutter. "Come on, not at dinner, like."

"You said it yourself, Sinéad. This is causing a rift in the family and it's an embarrassment. It needs to be dealt with."

"What?" Eoghan exclaimed, perhaps a little more loudly than necessary given that several heads turned their way. Seamus found himself doing just the same, though in desperation more than surprise. The slightly pathetic thought of _Help me_ rung loudly in his mind. "Mam!"

"It's not like that, Eoghan," she said, turning towards him, a frown settling deepening the shallow lines upon her forehead. "We've just talked about it. Tried to come up with some ideas."

"What are you talking about?" Eoghan asked shortly.

"Just some ideas," Seamus' mam said, staring at Eoghan with a mixture of imploring desperation and frustration. Seamus recognised it from their meeting the previous summer. "About how we can deal with this."

"What's there to deal with, Mam?"

"Eoghan, it's making people upset," Seamus' dad sighed. He looked weary, as though the entire situation could only tire him. Resigned, like he simply didn't think there was anything he could do. "We need to work something out, like."

"Like. What?" Eoghan ground out in sharp monosyllables. His grasp upon his fork was so tight his knuckles had turned as white as bone.

"Like treatment," Jack said promptly. He ignored Mags' whispered, "Jack, maybe not at the table?" and pressed on. Focusing upon Seamus once more, he leant forwards in his seat. Seamus couldn't help but recoil slightly, sinking into his own. "I've talked to some people, Seamus. People that help kids like you work out their problems and get better. They can fix this."

Seamus found himself shaking his head once more, horrified. What was he saying? "I don't –"

"We'll take you out of school for just a bit," Jack interrupted him curtly, "but this camp that Mage Matron's got set up works wonders. I've talked to some people. It works, like."

Seamus couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. Actual fixing? As though he had a broken bone, or had been cursed by something unsightly. Seamus was almost certain he was about to heave the dinner he'd eaten back onto his plate.

"Jack, nothing's been decided," Seamus' mam said, a little angrily.

"It's as good as," Jack said, his tone sharpening with each word. He still hadn't looked away from Seamus for a second, pale eyes eerily fixed. "Seamus isn't exactly giving us a lot to work with."

"I'm n-not –" Seamus attempted, just as Eoghan made a break with, "Uncail, how could you –?" but Jack cut them both off.

"Yes, you're not, like. That's the problem. Shutting down whenever we try to talk to you isn't going to work, Seamus. We need to fix this. It's a problem and it would be selfish of you to think that it just effects you. Think of the family and what they're all going through, boy." No one seemed able to speak and Jack ran with that. He continued at an increasingly rapid pace. "Think about it properly, like. Mage Matron's camp works to specifically fix problems like this with a rigorous mix of spell work and verbal therapy to –"

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

As one, every eye of their conversation – and an increasing number of those further along the table in both directions – turned towards Dean. Seamus followed suit and couldn't help but stare at what he saw.

Dean was… Dean was angry.

No, more than that, he was furious.

Rigidly straight-backed, the hard lines of his face seemed to have hardened further, eyes narrowed beneath a murderous frown and mouth thinned so severely that he was almost snarling. He only held a butter knife in his hand, but Seamus was abruptly worried he'd take to using it as a weapon. He wouldn't be surprised to find Jack with one less eye any moment.

Finally, Jack redirected his gaze. His glare narrowed further as it settled upon Dean. "Who are you?"

Dean's lip curled slightly. It actually curled. Seamus was so surprised that for a moment, the nauseating dizziness that he'd barely noticed had begun to darken the edges of his vision faded slightly, the audible throbbing of his heartbeat in his ears dimming. "I'm Seamus' friend."

"His friend?" Jack said, and it was nearly a sneer.

Seamus cringed. He knew the insinuation of that tone. He'd heard Jack use it – and Fergus, for that matter – when referring to Wayne. Gaze dropping down to his plate, wishing he could sink through his seat and then through the floor, Seamus muttered, "Not like that, Uncail. He's just a friend from school."

"Well, friend-from-school," Jack mimicked, not quite mockingly but with a definite edge to his words. Scolding, even. Excluding. "I don't believe this is any of your concern. We're talking family business."

"Family business?" Dean said. "Family business being tearing your nephew into pieces for being what he is?"

"For having a problem that he's not prepared to fix," Rob, apparently and surprisingly keeping up with the conversation, interjected. "The problems of one member of the family affect us all."

"Have you ever thought that maybe Seamus isn't the one with the problem but all the rest of you are?"

Seamus winced once more. He wanted to slap a hand over Dean's mouth even as he felt a surprising and almost awed feeling well within him. Dean was defending him from his family, just as Eoghan always had. Dean was speaking for him when Seamus couldn't do so for himself. It was a surreal feeling, because Seamus was more than capable of standing up for himself – or at least he usually was. He wasn't used to other people doing it for him, with others growing angry on his behalf. Even what he'd experienced with Eoghan already couldn't prepare him for when it came from Dean.

With something like a mixture of fear and worship, Seamus found himself staring up at Dean's profile. He seemed even angrier than he had been before, a slight flush darkening his cheeks when Jack replied. "I don't like your tone, kid. You obviously don't understand what's going on here, like."

"Oh, I think I understand perfectly well," Dean snapped in sharp retort. "You're putting your archaic prejudices above your loyalty and compassion for your nephew is what you're doing."

"Dean, it's not like that," Seamus' mam said. "We're just trying to fix the disagreement we're having over… things."

"By what, smothering Seamus until he bows under your stupid concept of what you consider to be normal and 'right'?"

"Well he's not, is he?" Fergus spoke up from along the table. Seamus swung his attention towards him. "He's not normal and he sure as hell isn't right in the head. It's fucking unnatural, isn't it, like, him fancying another boy?"

"There's nothing unnatural about it," Dean growled. "What's unnatural is the fact that most of his family seems to have turned against him for something that he didn't choose and that there is _nothing wrong with_."

Seamus swung his gaze between speakers. As he did so, he was aware of numerous eyes turning towards him, towards Dean, and of the unnatural quiet settling over the dining room. The Kavanagh manor was never quiet at Christmas time. All at once, Seamus realised that his nightmare was being realised.

Everyone was watching. Everyone was listening. Everyone was staring, and quite other than what he felt at school, Seamus didn't revel in the undivided attention in the slightest. Not at all. A cold rush seemed to freeze him to his very bones, overwhelming the feverish flush that flooded his cheeks with his rising gorge.

"Listen here, you little shit," Jack suddenly barked, his tone and turn-a-phrase so harsh that many of those staring eyes swung towards him. "You don't get a say in what's considered right for our family."

"Even as Seamus' friend?" Dean snapped back.

"Clearly you're as addled as Seamus is," Dillon muttered just loud enough to be heard. Seamus, abruptly horrified all the more, felt the sudden urge to throw his fork at him.

"Oi, shut the fuck up, Dillon," Eoghan said.

"Why don't you, Eoghan?" Dillon retaliated.

"Boys, stop," Mags said, but her attempt was drowned out by Jack's continuation.

"What's going on needs to be fixed," he said, leaning further into the table and raising his fork to jab in Seamus' direction. "What's happening here, this issue – it's reflecting on the family."

"So you're worried about how you all look _now_?" Dean asked. "Not about how it would look if you ostracised your nephew –"

"Please, Dean, it's not like that," Seamus' dad attempted feebly.

"Really?" Dean swung his attention towards him. "Because that's what it bloody-well sounds like."

"Dean, we're just trying to get things back to normal," Seamus' mam said, her words clipped.

"Well, maybe your definition of normal is fucked up."

"Amen to that," someone muttered just loud enough to be heard. Seamus thought it sounded like Aimee but he couldn't be sure. He couldn't look away from Dean, from his mam, his dad. From Jack.

"Can we please not talk about this now?" Mags pleaded once more.

"No," Jack said, voice rising so that it seemed to resound slightly across the dining room. "No, I think we do need this now." Then he turned his full attention upon Seamus. "Seamus, this is a problem. It's upsetting people, like, and it needs to be fixed. I don't care what your friends or teachers or whoever the hell else says, it needs to be sorted. This camp, it'll get rid of any of your untoward urges by magical means if nothing else can be worked out, and at most it'll take a month –"

"He's _not_ going," Eoghan said harshly, his voice a growl, just as Dean slapped a hand on the table and all but shouted, "Are you fucking insane?"

That just about did it. For everyone. As though the floodgates had been flung wide open, a tidal wave of objections arose and Seamus couldn't even tell from which direction they all came. In a torrential downpour, words and cries and shouts rebounded in a riot.

"There's nothing wrong with using magical means."

"It's fucking barbaric, is what it is."

" – don't understand, we've tried other solutions –"

" – won't be for long, just until he's better."

"Poor Anna's heart, she couldn't take the thought –"

"- reflecting badly –"

"- what will they think –"

"- heard the Burke's kid was just the same. Practically destroyed their reputation –"

"Unnatural, it is."

"Disgusting."

"That this could happen…"

Everyone seemed to be talking. Even those that hadn't been a part of the conversation – all of them had an opinion. Suddenly the whole room was a seabed of chaos. Shouts were flung, accusations made, something that sounded like a threat spilling from Jack's lips before it was drowned out by a nearly hysterical shriek from Mags at his side. Dillon was waving a hand at Eoghan, who seemed to be struggling to get a word in edgewise, and Seamus' mam was flushed a bright red in the face as she tried to break up the argument between Dean and Jack. His dad had dropped a head into his hand with the impression of one wishing to be anywhere else but there.

It was horrible. Around him, Seamus could feel the distress. He could see it, hear it, was nearly blown from his seat for the fierce words thrown his way. Across the room, his cousin Kate was stabbing a finger at him as though to punctuate her words, though Seamus couldn't hear them. His elderly great-aintín Anna was fanning her face with a napkin as though she was struggling for breath. Seamus didn't even dare to look in Fergus' direction again after a single glance convinced him that Fergus was about one breath away from launching himself across the table in a fit of anger.

He wanted it to stop. He wanted to clap his hands over his ears and drown out the mayhem that surrounded him. Seamus wanted to leave, to escape, to flee from the hatred that swirled in the room for what he was, for what he'd slowly and tentatively grown to accept he couldn't change and that Eoghan had been just as slowly and steadily encouraging him to not want to.

 _There's nothing wrong with me_ , a barely audible whisper mumbled in the back of his head. It was feeble but definitely there, and reinforcing every thought Seamus had been coaching himself with for months. _I don't have a problem. Everyone else just has a problem with me._

Through it all – the shouting, the throbbing fury, the waving hands and glares that launched daggers – Seamus finally snapped.

"Shut the fuck up!"

He was on his feet, he realised, though he couldn't recall deciding to stand. Not that it mattered; Seamus didn't care, and he was abruptly grateful that he monopolised the attention in the room. It was bad attention, but he was glad for it. Almost every word in the room died immediately before his bellow. It was a surprise given it was _his_ family.

"You're all fucking insane," he said harshly, his voice grating but still more of a shout than anything civilised. "You're going to fix me, Uncail Jack? Fix what? What the fuck are you going to fix? There's nothing _wrong_ with me. I don't even know why everyone cares!"

Seamus swung his gaze towards his mam. His vision was slightly blurred, the edges dimmed once more and his dizziness died none, but he pinned her nonetheless. "You wanted me to come back for Christmas, Mam, to sort out our disagreement? Bullshit. You just wanted me to stop fighting you on it. Well, fuck that. I'm done with that. You can all go and choke on your ideas and whatever because I'm not doing it. I'm not doing any of it."

"Seamus," his mam said, her voice hollow and horrified. "Seamus, we're just trying to help –"

"Help me?" Seamus slammed a fist onto the table. He felt more than saw several relatives flinch. "You're not trying to help me. None of you are. You're just trying to fix things because your fucking warped ideas of how I should be don't fit you anymore. Why? Why are you doing this?"

"Seamus –" Jack tried to interrupt, the single word thunderous.

Seamus didn't let him. He didn't even spare Jack a glance and his throat ached as his words became a real shout this time. "It shouldn't matter to you. It shouldn't matter to anyone! It _doesn't_ matter, just like it didn't matter to me that Mich's slept with half of Cork, or that everyone knows Aintín Tiani had that affair with what's-his-name ten years ago and no one knows if Benji's even Pete's kid. No one cares that Mam married a Muggle, and Uncail Jack, no one fucking said a word when we found out that Mags' aintín might be yours too. _That's_ messed up if you ask me but _I don't care_! So why the fuck should who I fancy matter to anyone else! This is me own life and I can do whatever the hell I want with it!"

Stunned silence met his words. Across the table, Mich was shifted uncomfortably. Tiani had sunk so low in her seat that she'd almost disappeared beneath the table and Pete looked like he was going to be sick, though not in the least surprised. Seamus' mam was as white as a sheet, though from anger or horror it wasn't quite apparent, and most of the rest of the room was staring in wide-eyed mortification. Even Jack seemed stunned into muteness. The only one who didn't seem to care was Seamus' great-uncle Col who, deaf as a tack as he was, was munching contentedly through his roast, utterly oblivious.

Seamus panted heavily. He registered distantly that each pant was less from the strain of what had become a shout than for the exhaustion of what his words had wrought in him. He was done. He was done with it all. Enough was enough; he loved his family – in spite of it all, he did love them – but they clearly didn't care for him enough to put aside their fucking prejudices and face reality like any other sane person.

Seamus was done. He'd tried to simply take it, had tried to convince them cordially, with pleas and askance and explanations. Nothing else had worked.

Suddenly, Seamus couldn't see all that well. The darkness seemed to have grown on the edges of his vision. Through the pounding of his heartbeat in his temple, the burning flush in his cheeks and the sickly taste of acid scalding the back of his throat, he registered that it was tears that blurred his eyes. Seamus wouldn't stand for that. He wouldn't start crying in front of a family who wanted nothing more than for him to bow to their whims and submit himself to their old-fashioned fascism. No way.

With a clenched fist, Seamus pushed his chair back and aside. It clattered to the floor but he didn't care. He didn't spare another glance around the room for those he turned from, not even for Dean or Eoghan, for Caitlin who had been quietly kind throughout the evening, for Aimee who was the only person who seemed to treat him exactly as she always had. Striding from the room to the echoing ring of silence, Seamus left them all behind him.

He was through the door before Dean and Eoghan caught up to him. Seamus barely heard their hasty footsteps pounding across the veranda as he burst from the front door nearly tumbled down the steps and onto the wide, ice-crusted footpath before the manor. It had started snowing in earnest now, a thick patter of flakes that melted and _must_ have been responsible for the wetness coating Seamus' cheeks. He didn't slow in his headlong strides away from the house, from the family, until a hand grabbed his wrist spun him to a stop.

"Seamus, hold up a sec," Dean said, grabbing Seamus' opposite shoulder as he turned him fully. Any further words he might have said died in a puff of white mist, however, when he met Seamus' gaze. As Seamus stared up at him and everything he felt seemed to come rushing out once more.

It was different this time.

"I hate it," Seamus croaked before he could help himself, his voice raw. "I hate it all. It's just so… so…" He shot a glare back at the manor, bypassing where Eoghan stood several steps behind Dean and watching him with a pained expression twisting his face. Seamus could barely make out his features. The damned, blurring snow.

"I hate them," he found himself saying. "I hate that they – that they _care_ so much for all the wrong reasons. That they… why do they even _care_? Why does it – why does it matter to them?" He stuttered to a halt as his voice wavered and broke.

Dean squeezed Seamus' shoulder with one hand, the other curling even more tightly around his wrist. His face softened, eyes large and dark and nothing if not heartbreakingly sympathetic. "I don't know," he said softly. "I don't know, Seam."

"I hate them," Seamus said, but it came out a sob this time. A fierce, heavy sob that seemed to split his chest in two. "I hate them so much. All of them are… they're just so…"

"I know. Yeah, I know."

"I hate it. I hate it, I hate it, _I hate it_ …" He was sobbing in earnest now, and the tears wouldn't stop. It wasn't the snow. It definitely wasn't the snow because they felt hot then abruptly cold upon his cheeks, freezing in the uplift of winter's biting breeze. Seamus bowed his head, would have likely crumpled in a heap to the ground had Dean not been holding him so tightly. Heavy gasps and sobs alike shook through him. "I hate it!"

Dean didn't say anything. Maybe he didn't know what else to say or maybe he knew that nothing would really make it any better. He did step forwards, though. He dropped his hands from Seamus' arm and his wrist, but only for a second. A moment later and he was wrapping him in a squeezing embrace, smothering, warm and tight and so strong that Seamus didn't need to struggle to keep his feet at all. Dean held him up all by himself.

Seamus stopped trying then. He'd been struggling, fighting the overwhelming pain and grief and loss that had been growing within him since his mam had first walked in on him and Wayne years ago and the expression of incomprehension then horror that had followed morphed her features. He gave up and just let it go.

If for nothing else, for the press of his face into Dean's shoulder that muffled his unstoppable and torrential tide of sobs Seamus was grateful.


	13. Chapter 13 - Sixth Year - Part IV

**Chapter 13: Sixth Year - Part IV**

Seamus didn't know what to say as he walked alongside Wayne. He didn't think there was anything he could say that would make things better. Wayne wasn't… he wasn't upset exactly, but he was worried. And regretful. Justifiably so, in Seamus' opinion.

"Did anyone survive?" Seamus finally asked as they turned a corner and made their way down the adjacent corridor. The ring of distant voices from those similarly leaving from the Great Hall could be heard behind them. "Like, have they done a – a –?"

"A body count?" Wayne shook his head, though it didn't appear to be entirely in denial. He simply seemed horrified. "I don't think so. But from what they can make out it was practically everyone in the village." He glanced at Seamus, his expression tight and pained. "The entire village, Seamus. Can you imagine? What kind of a horrible person would do that?"

It was so like Wayne. He didn't swear or curse, didn't rage or profess his horror in overloud tones. He just shook his head, his expression falling into one of entirely honest distress for the destruction inflicted upon others. So very like Wayne.

"Did they -?" Seamus attempted, and had to swallow tightly to vanquish the dryness from his mouth. He wasn't sure he should ask but, "Your family, they weren't -?"

Wayne shook his head. "No. Thank Merlin, no. I mean, Bracken Waters is so close to where I grew up, but my family weren't touched by the Death Eaters." He huffed a sigh that was almost a gasp. "Thank Merlin, no."

Seamus reached up an arm and – with difficulty, because Wayne was quite a bit taller than him – looped it around his neck. It was a horrible set of circumstances, the Death Eater attack upon the village reportedly wiping out every inhabitant within its radius, but at least they were afforded that reprieve. Close though the town that Wayne had grown up in was, none of his family had been caught in the crossfire.

The attack was just one of many that had occurred since New Year's. Seamus didn't think it was his imagination that they were becoming more frequent. The papers were riddled with stories – of attacks, of threats made, of people missing and those found but definitely not in a good way. None of the pictures were explicit but they hadn't needed to be. The vague references to the disasters wreaked upon people – actual people, and mostly Muggles and Muggleborns – was horrifying. Susan, who had something of an ear in the Ministry for her aunt's position, gave them the cut and dry version, and Seamus wasn't the only one who had asked her not to be so blunt in her relaying in future discussions. Poor Hannah had been white as a ghost for a whole day after Susan had told them what really happened to the Masterson family.

It was horrible. It was terrifying. The Death Eaters were breathing fear and invoking chaos in everyone who heard a whisper of them. Seamus had never in his life felt that kind of fear before, a constant, on-the-edge of his thoughts understanding that disaster was just beyond the horizon. It was exhausting to live with.

And on top of what had happened at Christmas… Seamus was very glad he was at Hogwarts. He was safe from attacks from multiple fronts and multiple sources when at school.

Wayne paused at a T-section of corridors with a sigh. He turned to Seamus, and his eyes were heavy, dark smudges beneath them from sleepless nights tossing and turning in distress. Seamus knew that feeling. "I think I'm going to head to the library for a bit."

Seamus nodded. "Okay. Do you want me to come with you?"

Smiling, Wayne shook his head. "It's okay. You look tired."

"So do you."

"That makes two of us, then."

"It's already nearly eight, like."

Wayne shrugged. "Yeah, well, I think I'll just like the quiet for a bit. Hufflepuff Basement isn't exactly a place for solitude. Not that I'm complaining, because it's great that it's not, I guess, but I just…"

"Want to be alone?" Seamus offered.

Wayne smiled again just as wearily and nodded. "Sorry. It's not that I don't enjoy your company or anything."

"Wayne, you don't have to apologise."

"I just don't want you to think I'm ungrateful."

"I don't, like. Wayne, I don't think you have an ungrateful bone in your body."

Again, Wayne smiled, and it seemed just a little warmer this time. "Thanks, Seamus. I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Yeah, see you," Seamus replied, and he watched as Wayne turned and started down the corridor in the direction of the library. There was a slump to his posture that had been gradually weighing more and more heavily upon him in recent weeks, as though each article in the papers struck him another debilitating blow. Wayne was an innately kind person, much like Hannah, and though they rarely if ever had anything personally to do with what happened to those that made the papers, it was clear that it hurt them both fiercely. Such was the trials of nice people, Susan always said.

"What, and you're not a nice person?" Parvati had asked her once when it was just she, Seamus, Dean and Susan.

Susan gave a small, sad smile. "Not like them I'm not."

Susan was right, at least in that regard. Seamus didn't think of himself as callous, cruel, or 'not a nice person', but he didn't feel the pain of strangers like Wayne and Hannah did. They both looked only more exhausted every morning for the new stories posted in headlines across the _Daily_ _Prophet_. They weren't the only ones either; many others, though significantly proportioned from the Hufflepuff house, seemed bowed beneath the weight of it all.

Turning and heading towards Gryffindor tower, Seamus contemplated that. He felt it too. He did feel scared, felt sympathy for those who lost their loved ones in such brutal ways and horrified by the destruction wrought upon so many people. Muggles in particular, for so often they had no idea what was even happening. To even consider attacking someone who didn't even know magic existed…

Yet even so, Seamus felt guilty. He couldn't suppress that feeling, because despite the horror, the destruction, the evident pain that was being wrought upon the world out of sight from Hogwarts' students, he was a little grateful for the fact. Not that it was happening but that it provided a distraction for him. That, in the face of something so monumentally disastrous, it was difficult to consider his own situation and think it the end of the world.

In that regard, selfishly and a little incomprehensibly, Seamus was almost grateful for the war.

He tried not to think about what had happened at Christmas. He tried not to remember what his family had said, the words that Jack especially had spoken, and what Seamus had shouted in reply without even intending to do so. He didn't want to think about the camp that Jack had suggested would 'help' him, or that his mam and dad hadn't stepped in to tell Jack that it was a horrible, stupid and cruel idea. The memory of his entire family spontaneously combusting when Dean had shouted in an attempt to silence Jack in his words had haunted Seamus since.

That Dean had stood up for him – to Seamus, that was perhaps the only light of the situation. He didn't need to be protected or defended, or he didn't think he did. Not usually. Except that at that time he'd needed it. And Dean had stepped up to the play.

Seamus didn't think about Christmas, forced himself not to despite that heart-seizing feeling of almost-too-warm that suffused him when he remembered Dean's words. He didn't want to recall it because… because it was over. In his head, somehow, it seemed like the switch had finally been flicked. There was no going back from that, no repairing the damage that had done.

Seamus didn't want to think about Christmas because it made the hole that had once held his family ache all the more.

Fortunately – in a horrible kind of way – there were distractions aplenty at Hogwarts. There were the stories in the papers that monopolised ever breakfast conversation, but that wasn't the whole of it. Seamus had his friends to talk to, his frequent letters from Eoghan and those from Aimee too that hadn't slowed even briefly. He had his classes and, more recently, the Apparition crash course that was as dismal as it was hilarious, because Apparition was _hard_. He had his upcoming exams that loomed from just around the corner, approaching with unexpected and remarkable speed. Blessedly, though he still found himself awake at nights sometimes struggling not to think about it, Seamus didn't really have the time to consider the disaster of his Christmas.

Clambering through the porthole into the Gryffindor common room, Seamus spared a wave for Parvati where she sat with Lavender – after Lavender and Ron had broken up, he'd spent less time with her, though surprisingly Parvati always seemed to make an effort to maintain their friendship – and slipped past to the boy's dormitory steps. He climbed with trudging steps towards the sixth year's door and all but fell into the quiet within.

It was empty. That much Seamus registered from a glance. Empty and ringing with silence in a way that Seamus was growing more and more relieved to experience of late. It was true that he'd never been one much for awkward silences, for leaving such silence untouched and unfilled was talk and often inane chatter. But Seamus had grown to appreciate it more of late.

Not that he wouldn't take any opportunity that arose to break it, mind, but still. It was nice in small doses.

Trudging towards his bed, Seamus dropped his bag and collapsed bodily onto the covers. The mattress bounced slightly before stilling and he was left to sigh into his pillow wearily. It wasn't the same weariness that Wayne felt, Seamus knew. He was more simply exhausted from their Defence lesson earlier that afternoon; Snape was a rigorous professor and seemed to have no care for brutalising and exhausting his students. An entire class in utter muteness, including for all spellcasting? It had almost killed Seamus to manage.

He wasn't left alone for long, however. Barely minutes after he'd entered the room, the door swung inwards once more and, turning towards the entrance, Seamus watched as Dean walked in. He hadn't seen him at dinner, Dean apologising that he had to go and talk to Ginny about something. Seamus was surprised that he was back so soon, though he supposed he shouldn't be. Dean had been… he wasn't quite clingy, but they'd certainly spent a lot more time together since Christmas. Seamus wasn't sure if Dean thought he needed the support or if he was simply growing tired of splitting his time between his friends and his girlfriend; maybe it was a bit of both. They never spoke about Christmas after the first time when Dean had told him that he would be an ear to listen to should Seamus have anything he needed to say.

Seamus didn't. Not specifically to Dean, but at all. He wasn't sure if he ever would.

"Hey," he mumbled into his pillow, not bothering to rise in greeting. "You're back fast, like."

Dean paused in step for a moment as he glanced towards Seamus' bed. Apparently he hadn't noticed him as he's slouched into the room with his own heavy step. His pause was only brief, however, before he was crossing the room, dropping his own bag and –

"Ow," Seamus grunted as Dean collapsed across his on his bed. The mattress protested briefly before subsiding as Dean adjusted himself so that he was lying perpendicular across Seamus back. "You're crushing me."

"No I'm not."

"You are, like. I can't even breath."

"And yet you can still speak?"

"You obviously don't know me very well if you think not being able to breath means I'm not going to talk."

Seamus could feel Dean's laugh more than he heard it, the vibrations thrumming through his back. Once, Seamus would have been surprised and more than a little disconcerted by Dean's behaviour. Once. But that was before. Not anymore, because Dean wasn't like how he'd once been. He wasn't careless towards or disregarding of contact, and he didn't seem to have any urge to avoid leaning into Seamus, or wrapping an arm around his shoulders or, as he did now, monopolising his bed as Seamus had always done to him, despite Seamus already sprawled atop it. It would have been unexpected once, but not anymore.

Not that it really made things easier, Seamus thought. Not after what Dean had done at Christmas. If anything, with how Seamus felt, with how his feeling had only grown over the break and since, it made it very, very much harder. With the warm yet casual weigh of Dean lying across his back, Seamus was very glad that he was lying on his stomach and all but turned away from Dean. He didn't want to make things awkward, which they would inevitably become if Dean realised…

 _What would he think if I told him?_ Seamus wondered. There was a big different between accepting that his best friend was gay and realising that he was gay _for him_. Would Dean freak out? Would he finally snap and become disgusted with Seamus? Seamus wasn't sure. He didn't know and didn't think he would ever have the courage to find out.

Dean's heavy sigh, once more felt almost more than heard, drew Seamus' attention towards him. He twisted as much as he could, propping himself up on his elbows and glancing over his shoulder to where Dean lay with chin resting on folded arms. Almost his entire lower half simply hung from the opposite side of the bed, but he didn't seem to care. His expression was unexpectedly contemplative.

"What's wrong?" Seamus asked. "You bothered?"

"Hm?" Dean asked, glancing at him sidelong.

"Did something happen, like?"

Dean regarded him for a moment. A long moment, in which he seemed to toss around an idea, before he sighed once more. He stretched both arms out before him and instead pressed his face into Seamus' blankets. Then he mumbled something nearly indecipherable.

Seamus stared. He thought Dean had said… but no, surely that wasn't right. "What was that?" Seamus asked, twisting a little more, or as much as he could given that Dean was a dead weight pinning him down.

Another sigh and Dean turned his head towards him. "I said Ginny and I broke up."

Seamus had heard right. He'd heard right twice, and yet he still couldn't quite believe it. "What?"

"Just before," Dean said, rolling onto his side to face Seamus properly. "We talked about it. To be honest – I mean, I won't say it was surprising, so I should have seen it coming. We fight practically all the time."

"You argue," Seamus corrected feebly. "That's different."

"Yeah, well, even if it is." Dean gave a poor attempt at a shrug, awkward for how he lay. "She just got annoyed with so many things I was doing, and I have to admit that what she was doing half the time was starting to get on my nerves too."

Dean sounded far too rational and accepting of the situation given that it had quite obviously only just happened. Seamus stared at him uncomprehendingly. How would that be, to break up with someone over an argument? He supposed that such a manner was probably more commonplace than how it had happened between himself and Wayne, but still, he couldn't imagine it. It would be horrible.

"I'm sorry," Seamus found himself saying, and felt like a liar for it. Sorry? That they'd broken up? Not in the least.

Dean gave his awkward shrug once more. "It's okay. Like I said, I guess I should have been expecting it."

"Are you alright with it, like?"

Sighing, Dean rolled back onto his stomach once more, pinning Seamus to the bed once more. Seamus didn't complain. "I guess… I guess I am. Maybe. I mean, when I think about it, that she'll probably start seeing someone else sometime – that feels like shit. But that we're not dating anymore?" He swung his arms slightly as they hung over the edge of Seamus' bed, hands striking the mattress with soft little pats. "I don't think so. Does that make me a bad person, that I'm just kind of jealous and not much else?"

Seamus didn't think so. He didn't think it made him a bad person at all. But then who was he to say what was right and wrong when it came to boyfriends and girlfriends? He wasn't exactly a model example himself; even when he'd been dating Wayne – and enjoying dating Wayne – Seamus had known that he'd liked Dean. That understanding hadn't dampened even slightly. Not once.

Seamus didn't say any of that, however. How could he? Instead, he offered his own awkward shrug. "I don't know. Maybe."

"Yeah." Dean sighed once more. It wasn't quite morose but more than a little regretful. "Even so, I can't say it feels great, you know? Being dumped and all."

Seamus wanted to speak then. To badmouth Ginny and to profess how she must have been an idiot if she let Dean go, if she found little habits like his unconscious chivalry and 'clinginess' to be annoying. That Seamus didn't think she'd find another bloke even half as descent as Dean if she spent the rest of her life searching.

But he didn't say that. It would have been far too much, and that kind of confession wasn't what Dean needed right then. What he needed was a pick-me-up. Seamus thought he knew just the thing.

Wriggling out from underneath Dean to Dean's initially confused, "What are you doing?" and Seamus' reply of, "Well, you're kind of lying on top of me, like. Move, yeah?" he clambered from his bed. Dropping onto his hands and knees, he fumbled beneath for the little box he'd stashed beneath weeks before.

"What are you doing?" Dean asked, peering over the side of the bed with an eyebrow raised.

Seamus grinned up at him and was satisfied to see Dean seemingly unconsciously adopt a small smile in response. "Let's do something fun. Forget about all this shit, like."

"What did you have in mind?"

Seamus didn't reply but to pull the box from under the bed, flip it open and draw out its contents. He held up the little bundle triumphantly.

Dean stared at him with a mixture of disbelief and faint yet growing excitement. "Tell me that's not what I think it is."

Grin only widening, Seamus shrugged. "I don't know. Is it?"

"How did you even get it school? They're banned. Did Eoghan send it to you?"

Snorting, Seamus shook his head. "Seriously? Eoghan? He wouldn't break school rules like that."

"Then…?"

"I made them." Even Seamus could hear the pride in his own voice. "Slughorn's kind of stupidly gullible. I asked if I could borrow some potions ingredients to study and he basically gave me free reign in his store room."

"To make fireworks?" Dean said, and though his eyebrows climbed his forehead a small smile twitched his lips. "I don't think that's what he had in mind, Seam."

Seamus shrugged once more. "Well, he said experimenting is good, like. Just think of it as being for my education."

"You're so full of shit."

"It's also technically going to be my Muggle Studies project, so even truer."

Dean shook his head, smile widening. He might protest, but then Dean had always protested that Seamus had an inclination for doing explosive things. Not so much for that which got them into trouble, though Dean did dutifully mutter, "If we get caught we're going to get detention."

"Then we won't get caught. Simple."

"Astronomy Tower maybe?"

"That's what I'm thinking."

Dean regarded Seamus for a moment, thoughtful and almost hesitant, but Seamus knew he had him. Dean was smiling, looked to have shrugged off the sombre thoughtfulness that had been afflicting him, and actually seemed excited. Finally he nodded. "Alright, then. Just let me get my Burn Cream."

Seamus grinned.

* * *

They had the dormitory to themselves for some reason. Seamus didn't know where the rest of their house mates were; he hadn't seen any of them since Harry had raced into the room a little over an hour ago, snatched a ball of socks of all things from his trunk, then fled once more without saying a word. Seamus exchanged a bemused glance with Dean at that, but neither had commented.

It was nice just to sit together. To chat idly as they perched in the alcove of the window, watching the last of the sun disappear and the sky flooded with stars in its wake. Seamus had taken to flipping through the book Eoghan had gotten him for Christmas, the light of his _Lumos_ illuminating the fizzling and morphing pyrotechnics within _Dr Filbuster's Original Fiery Works_. Across from him, beneath his own _Lumos_ Charm, Dean was sketching away on his drawing pad. The constant _scratch-scratch-scratch_ was had long been a soothing sound to Seamus.

Twisting the Dr Filbuster's book around in his hands, Seamus watched the sequence of slowed-down sparks morphing into billowing white light that erupted into an explosive shower. He could stare at such images forever and never tire of them. Who would have thought that, when he'd first performed accidental magic, it would effectively set him up for life? Certainly not Seamus.

Turning the page, a muted hum from Dean drew his attention. Dean was staring down at his work, pencil paused in its scratching, with a contemplative expression upon his face. His head was cocked to study it at an angle and Seamus couldn't help but smile. He loved watching Dean draw.

"What's wrong?" He asked.

Dean glanced up at him. "Hm?"

"Something wrong?"

Smiling in reply, Dean shook his head. "No. Just thinking."

"About?"

"What else needs to be done with it." Dean turned his attention back to studying his work with a keen eye.

Seamus shifted in his seat, slumping back further upon the pillows wedged beneath him to provide some protection from the cold stone floor. They were already dressed in their pyjamas by unspoken agreement, but cotton slacks didn't quite mange a full cushion by itself. Dropping his gaze back to the open book in his lap, Seamus turned another page. "What are you drawing, anyway, like?"

"Hm?" Dean hummed again, still staring at his drawing pad.

Seamus spared him a smirk. Dean had always been one to lose himself in his art; he'd detach from his surroundings seemingly without realising it. Seamus thought it was a little funny, and would often utilise Dean's distraction to simply watch him. When Dean was lost himself like that, Seamus could stare without fear of being noticed.

He'd never really considered it when they were younger, but Dean was a good-looking bloke. The sort of good-looking that might have passed unnoticed until one really looked, but after that couldn't possibly be missed. His almost perfectly symmetrical features, his strong brow but soft, gentle eyes, the way he held his mouth, pressing his lips together when he worked as though it helped him concentrate. He had nice hands, Seamus had realised, and he found himself watching them almost as much as he did Dean's face. Big, long fingered, but as gentle as Dean almost always was.

Almost, because Seamus had seen him otherwise, and the avoided memory of the previous Christmas months before would stick with him for life.

Shaking himself from his staring – because regardless of his feelings it wouldn't do for Dean to notice him – Seamus nudged him with a toe. "I said, what are you drawing, like."

Dean glanced up at him this time. The smile he turned upon Seamus was a mixture of amusement, pride and something that looked like sheepishness. "You, actually."

"Me?"

"Yeah. I've done it heaps before, but –"

"Wait, what?" Seamus straightened in his seat, blinking rapidly. "You're drawing _me_?"

Dean's smile widened, growing more amused than sheepish. "Yeah. You've got a good face to draw. Or maybe, I don't know, I'm just familiar with it so I find it better… or something."

Seamus stared at him and, quite horrifyingly, felt his cheeks flush with warmth. Stupid Dean. Saying such a thing – _doing_ such a thing – was utterly embarrassing. It would have been embarrassing for _Seamus_ to have done it, and he was the one that fancied Dean. When Dean did it? Who did that kind of thing of their friends?

As Seamus sunk back into his seat, hunching his shoulders slightly, Dean laughed. "You're embarrassed," he said, and even through the darkness Seamus could see his eyes sparkle.

"Well, yeah," he muttered, poking Dean with his toes once more. "It's embarrassing, like."

"No it's not."

"It is."

"Why?"

"Why the bloody hell are you drawing me?"

Dean shrugged, his unshakeable smile, his perfectly straight smile, spread widely. "I told you. I find you good to draw."

"That's not an explanation."

"Yes it is."

"Not a very good one," Seamus muttered, sinking further into his seat. Dean laughed once more before turning back to his drawing.

Seamus, of course, couldn't do the same to his book. How could he? Dean drew him? And not just the once but repeatedly? How had Seamus not known about that? It was frightfully embarrassing that he _hadn't known_ , but more than that, Seamus was mortified because a very big part of him was pleased that Dean was doing it. That he'd chosen _Seamus_ to draw.

Fighting to tamp down upon the warmth still heating his cheeks and very determinedly looking away from Dean, Seamus turned his gaze out the window. The night was a deep blue, the grounds almost unperceivable for the darkness. Seamus could see the distant glow of minute lights from Hagrid's hut, the deeper darkness of the Forbidden Forest beyond it. The hill that trickled down to the lake and the –

The light that appeared. It wasn't sudden, didn't spring to life, but as if it had always been it was just _there_ – faded green-white light that wasn't quite bright but illuminated nonetheless. Seamus straightened in his seat once more, leaning towards the window with a frown. Had someone launched a _Lumos Maxima_ into the air above the school? But no, _Lumos_ charms were yellow-white, not green.

Leaning further towards the window, craning his neck to peer upwards through the glass, Seamus frowned. "What the…?" Then he trailed off. He stopped because he saw it.

"D… Dean," he croaked.

"Hm?"

"Dean, you've – Dean, look at this. Tell me it's not – that it's not, like –"

Dean clearly heard the sudden foreboding in Seamus' voice for he lowered his sketchpad immediately and shuffled on his knees to Seamus' side. Before Seamus' pointing finger, his gaze followed his directing and drew upwards. Seamus wasn't looking at him, couldn't shake his attention from the conjugation hanging above the school, but he heard Dean's sharp inhalation.

"Is that…?" He breathed.

Seamus nodded, wide-eyed and staring. "That's the Dark Mark."

Memory of the summer before fourth year, at the Quidditch World Cup, welled to the forefront of Seamus' mind. The translucent conjugation of green-white light was a mirror image; the smooth spread of the skull, the hollow eyes, the writhing snake coiling from a hanging jaw. Seamus had recalled that sight time and time again after seeing it, couldn't help recalling, and he would never forget it. He wouldn't forget what it meant either.

Seamus was on his feet before he knew what he was doing, his book tumbling to the floor. Dean sprung to standing beside him, and when Seamus glanced his way it was to meet eyes as wide as his own felt. "Doesn't the Dark Mark mean that someone – that someone's –"

Seamus nodded tightly. "D-dead. Yeah, that's what it's supposed to…"

"What the hell?" Dean's voice was a choked whisper. He glanced out the window once more, then back at Seamus. "What the fucking hell? Why's it here?"

Seamus wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer to that question. The possibilities were horrifying to contemplate. Instead, he turned from the window and in a quick step that rapidly grew into a run was hastening from the dorm. The sound of Dean's footsteps followed closely behind him.

Apparently they weren't the only ones to have seen it. Scatterings of the younger years and a few of the seniors were poking pale faces nervously from the doors of the dormitory. Those that still remained in the common room were on their feet and crowding around the window. Whispers hissed throughout and someone uttered something that sounded like a muffled cry of fear.

Taking the steps two at a time, Seamus descended the stairwell. The view from the largest window in the common room wasn't much better than that from the sixth year dormitory, but the glow was more visible. Heads turned briefly towards their entrance, towards those that followed after Seamus and Dean, but it was only Parvati hastened across the common room to his side.

"What's going on?" Seamus asked warily. He wasn't sure he wanted to know.

Parvati was trembling slightly. She was actually shaking. "I don't know. No one knows. All of a sudden I just noticed it coming through the window, and –"

"Have any of the teachers come in?" Dean interrupted from Seamus' side. A strange kind calm seemed to have gripped him, his voice low and slow and almost soothing. How he managed that, Seamus had no idea. Seamus himself was abruptly terrified, and even more so for not knowing what was going on. The Dark Mark… it meant…

Parvati shook her head shortly, turning widely blown eyes to Dean. "No. No, it's only been around for… I don't even know how long, but no teachers have come in."

"Should we go and get someone, like?" Seamus asked, glancing towards Dean and then over Dean's shoulder to the cluster of older students spread behind them and shuffling a little closer. Their expressions were tight and worried and only slightly more composed than those of their juniors. "Maybe send a message to McGonagall?"

Appearing at Parvati's side, when Lavender spoke she sounded distinctly shrill. "Wouldn't she know? Surely she'd have seen it by now, so shouldn't she –?"

"What if something's happened to one of the teachers?" One of the younger boys – a fourth year, Seamus thought – said in a warbling voice nearly as high as Lavender's. "What if something's -?"

"Would someone tell us?" Someone else asked.

"Maybe we should send for help," said another, an older student, and he was one of the ones that managed a modicum of composure.

"Should we let everyone know? Get everyone up?"

"Do we go down to the Great Hall?"

"What if someone's come into the school?"

"Oh Merlin, do you think that's happened? Has someone –?"

"Someone's been _killed_ , that's what it means. Is that -?"

"Are we in danger?"

"Should we -?"

"I don't want to die!"

It was a little ridiculous, the sudden leap to utter terror, but Seamus couldn't blame any of them. He felt that upwelling of near panic himself, and it was taking all of his control not to let it loose. He didn't know why that was suddenly so important, except that at the sight of some of the first years in particular, eyes so large that they appeared to take up their entire faces, and as he saw a pair of second years begin to cry and a third year sag against the wall as though his legs abruptly couldn't hold him up, Seamus knew he had to do that at least.

Raising his voice before he even knew what he was going to say, Seamus called for attention. "Oi, shut up, everyone! You're just freaking the little kids out, like."

Surprisingly, Parvati was the one that spoke up at his side. "Yeah, we don't know what's happened. We shouldn't make assumptions."

"As far as we know, it's just a mistake," Dean added. "There's no certainty that anyone's –"

He was cut of as a rumble vibrated throughout the room. As one, every pair of eyes swung to the entrance to the tower. Gasps sounded yet no one spoke, not until another rumble sounded a second later and a distant cry managed to seep through the door.

Seamus stared right along with his housemates. He could hear his breath hitch, catching and starting faster. A slight ringing rose in his ears and at his sides his hands curled into the warmth of his slacks. The grasp didn't provide any comfort at all.

"What's happening?" Someone whimpered.

The press of a shoulder to his own drew Seamus' attention to Dean at his side. The composure that Dean had dredged up was clearly wavering as his face tightened and he didn't look nearly as confident as he'd sounded moments before.

The sight of Dean scared helped Seamus somehow. He could feel himself growing increasingly terrified, his palms turning clammy, his breaths wavering, but that was secondary. That Dean was scared too, that he didn't know what to do any more than Seamus did and that doing nothing wouldn't alleviate that fear, grounded Seamus ever so slightly. He didn't want Dean to be scared. Dean being scared was… that was terrible. A different kind of terrible entirely.

Swallowing down his fear, Seamus hardened himself. His hands curled more tightly into his slacks. "I'm going to go and get McGonagall."

"What?" Parvati squeaked, swinging her attention from the porthole back towards him.

Seamus glanced her way only sparingly. "Something's wrong, like. I'll – I'll either find McGonagall or, I don't know, work out what's going on." Another rumble caused him to flinch, but Seamus struggled to suppress the response. He started for the door.

"I'm coming with you," Dean said shortly and not unexpectedly, following in step beside him.

"Me too," Parvati said, and that _was_ unexpected.

Seamus spared her another glance, and was surprised to see a number of other housemates – ex-DA members, he noticed absently – nod their agreement and take their own hesitant steps after him. Seamus didn't know what to make of that. He was scared, wanted to know what was going on, and a very small and very feeble part of him wanted to help against whatever was happening because _clearly_ something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

Seamus didn't want to go outside the common room, but something made him think he had to. Apparently he wasn't the only one to think as such.

A couple of prefects herded the cluster of remaining kids together as Seamus and those in company – barely seven of them in total – started towards the door. It was with tentative steps that they slipped into the corridor beyond. Silence reigned, nothing but the quiet scuffle of bare feet on the stone floor. No one made a sound – until another rumble erupted.

It was definitely a spell. That much Seamus could tell from the distant, echoing cry of an incantation, a burst of light that beamed from a distant source and illuminated the corridor for a split second. Lavender uttered a shriek before clamping her hands over her mouth and one of the seventh year boys made a sound a little like a moan.

Seamus found himself with his back against the corridor wall quite without knowing how it had gotten there. Dean was at his side, and Seamus was just as surprised to realise that, seemingly instinctively, he'd grabbed onto Seamus' arm as though holding him still.

"What was that?" Someone whispered hoarsely behind them.

Seamus shared a glance with Dean. He didn't know who the question had been posed to, but he hoped it wasn't him. He wasn't a leader. That step from the common room was about as much 'leading' as he could manage.

Dean shook his head before sparing a half-glance over his shoulder. "I don't know. But I think shit's going down."

It was far from eloquent yet very clearly described the situation. Seamus was glad it was Dean who had replied.

By unspoken consensus, they began to creep down the corridor, Seamus and Dean for whatever reason leading the way with Parvati and Lavender and then the seventh years just behind them. They descended a corridor, sharing a wince at the sound of a wailing scream that set Seamus' nerves thrumming, and down another. A stairwell, a second, and then –

They saw it. There were no people, but evidence of a fight was strewn across the corridor. There was a hole in the wall, an actual hole, as though someone had launched a _Bombarda_ indoors, which a detachedly horrified voice in Seamus' mind screamed _That's so dangerous!_ Rubble scattered beneath it and a scorch mark where a spell had clearly struck a little further along the wall.

"There's a fight?" The seventh year girl whispered, her voice warbling. "Is someone fighting?"

No one replied. No one needed to. Seamus suddenly wished he'd decided to stay the common room.

Another scream was what urged them onwards, far closer this time and this one sounded like a shouted spell. An explosive crash, the sound of stone splintering, followed a second later, accompanied by such force that the very ground of beneath Seamus' feet vibrated in protest. Though every instinct urged him to turn and run the other way, Seamus followed it, and as he and his motley crew rounded the next corner into the following double-wide corridor, the true horror appeared before them.

A battle raged. Spells were flung lightning fast, blinding, striking walls as often as erected _Protego_ charms. Bodies crashed into walls as targets scrambled to dodge and feet raced frantically to escape from attackers. An _Incendio_ chased a figure that Seamus didn't recognise, an older man that stumbled and fell before springing back to his feet and sprinting around the distant corner to disappear. Another cackled uproariously as she shot spell after fiery spell in her backwards-retreating wake. There were people everywhere, and not all of them foreign. Seamus thought he saw Ginny duck for cover as a wall exploded to her side, and a figure that he thought was Neville collapse face down into the middle of the mess. When had they gotten there? He hadn't seen them in the common room. _Why were they there?!_

Seamus stumbled immediately backwards into the nearest wall, staring and rigid at the display spread before him. He and his friends – they'd meant to be finding a teacher. They'd meant to be looking for an answer to the Dark Mark, to know what was going on. But this… Seamus hadn't prepared himself for this. A fight? An actual fight? He couldn't _fight_.

"Oh Merlin," a voice behind him whispered, and that was all any of them got the chance to say because a spell someone launched flew towards them. It was all Seamus could do to fling himself away from the wall.

He crashed to the ground jarringly. His shoulder protested, and he heard himself gasp as something hard and sharp struck his hip as he fell. The instinct to curl in upon himself was irresistible, and Seamus didn't fight it. He was terrified. Had someone exploded the wall? They'd actually _exploded_ it? While they were standing _right there?_

Like a bucket of cold water splashed over his head, Seamus was slapped with the truth. This was dangerous. It was serious and it was dangerous, and someone could get hurt. His brief glimpse of Neville flashed into his mind. Was he alright? Fuck, had he gotten hurt? Was he -?

Blinking his eyes open where he hadn't realised he'd squeezed them closed, Seamus struggled to sit up in the midst of his upwelling of terror for approaching attackers. He dragged his gaze over his shoulder; Parvati had tumbled in a heap with Lavender as though they'd been flung into one another. One of the seventh years was coughing as though choking as they struggled to sit up themselves. And Dean –

"Dean!" Seamus found himself shouting, twisting to glance further around him. He caught his breath in a gasp of relief when he saw Dean barely a handful of steps from him.

"I'm here," Dean replied, rolling towards him in turn. He was a tangle of limbs sprawled and haphazard, but he managed to commando-crawl to Seamus' side as soon in a blink. "God, Seamus, this is –"

"Shit, Dean. We need to get out of here."

Dean nodded fervently before ducking and flinching as another explosion sounded. Further away this time, but still far too close for Seamus' comfort. "Yeah. Yeah, we need to –"

He didn't get a chance to finish, and mostly because he cut himself off. Something clearly caught his attention over Seamus' shoulder and his eyes widened. Before Seamus could follow his line of sight, Dean uttered a wordless cry and grabbed at Seamus to drag him flat to the ground once more.

A blast of orange light flared overhead as Seamus slammed into the stone floor. A lick of heat passed above his head, so close he could swear he smelt his hair burn. He couldn't breathe. That had nearly – it had nearly –

"Fuck!" A voice sounded from the direction it had come.

Seamus glanced towards the man who had spoken. He was big, burly, his face twisted into a sneer and half hidden behind a flopping fringe. Even as Seamus struggled to push himself onto his hands and knees, he was raising his wand.

Seamus didn't know how he reacted so fast. He didn't recall grabbing for his own wand but he must have, because it was suddenly in his hand. Almost instinctively, Seamus found himself raising it, found the thought rise to the forefront of his mind, saw the spell launched.

He'd always been good at explosions.

The wall of the corridor erupted. In a shattering crash, a _BOOM_ that echoed through the floor, and it blasted straight into the man. Dust sprung into existence as though conjured and stone was flung aloft in a flurry. Another scream sounded, though it didn't seem like it came from the man, and Seamus… Seamus…

Crouched on his knees, he stared, horrified. In the midst of the unexpected and unprecedented battle, a battle that still raged further down the corridor, he was frozen. Had he just…? That man, had Seamus just…? He couldn't see him through the dusty smoke that had followed his explosion, and even as an attacker, as one who had just tried to shot them with a spell, that invisibility scared Seamus more than anything.

Had Seamus…

Had he really…?

"…mus! Seamus!" The sound of Dean's desperate voice only made itself heard as the ringing Seamus' hadn't even registered sounding in his ears died. He felt his shoulder grabbed and was forcibly turned.

Dean was crouching on his haunches beside him and visibly trembling. The hand that grasped Seamus' shoulder shook as it squeezed before dropping to Seamus' wrist and tugging him to his feet as he rose in a lurch. "Come on, we need to get away from here," he said, and Seamus didn't get a chance to speak for being towed after him. He let himself be drawn back the way they'd come, sparing a glance over his shoulder for the battlefield behind them. For the figures that looked slightly fewer than what had been there moments before, the shattered stone spread like rubble from a ruin, a splintered door lying like a dead body in its midst. It wasn't bright enough to really make out the distant figures, but Seamus could see… he thought he could see Neville and he was…

Where was everyone else? Where had Parvati disappeared to, and Lavender, and the seventh years? Had they fled? And Ginny too. Seamus couldn't see any of them. He couldn't see _anything._

Dean dragged him around the corner but they didn't go further than that. Seamus wasn't sure whether it was Dean or himself who collapsed first, but all of a sudden they were sliding to the ground, backs to the wall and huddling for the scant shelter that wall provided. Dean still grasped Seamus' wrist, fingers still trembling, and Seamus found himself reaching for Dean in turn. His hands grasped Dean's arm and hung on for dear life.

"Dean," he gasped, dragging his eyes up to meet Dean's dark stare. He flinched as a fizzling snap that sounded like a whip-crack rung from the sidelong corridor. "Dean, what –?"

"We can't do anything," Dean said. "We're useless against them. We can't –"

"Who are they?" Seamus asked, though he didn't really need to be told. He knew. He knew just as he saw that Dean knew, because the Dark Mark said it all. Fingers tightening in their grasp, Seamus stared up at Dean. He could feel his lip quiver. "That guy, the one that was next to where I – I exploded –"

Dean shook his head sharply, expression abruptly tight. "He got away. I saw him run away."

Despite the fact that Seamus knew what they must be, _knew_ it, he felt relief. He didn't want to kill anyone. That spell itself had been more of an accident than anything and he didn't… he didn't want to…

"Fuck," Seamus found himself gasping, squeezing his eyes closed and bowing his head. He butted his forehead into Dean's shoulder. "Dean, we're… fuck."

Dean made a wordless grunt of reply that somehow managed to sound as terrified as Seamus felt. Neither of them moved and neither lessened their grasps upon one another either. They simply sat, huddled and hunched, as the sounds of the raging battle, the exchanged spells, crashed around them.

Seamus wasn't sure how long it lasted. It could have been minutes or it could have been hours. At some point, though, he realised that the exchange of spells had stopped. That the sound of magic striking walls and the cries of the dodging or hit had ceased. Slowly, tentatively, Seamus raised his head and blinked his eyes open.

Dean was already peering wide-eyed towards the corner they'd fled from. Towards the corridor where the Death Eaters had been fighting Hogwarts students. He looked almost as though he expected a madman race around it, wand waving and teeth bared, screeching a curse. Seamus turned towards it too, and for another long moment they waited.

He wasn't sure which of them decided to move first. By silent agreement, both he and Dean rose on wavering feet and crept, tiptoed, towards the corner. Almost fearing that he'd get his head blown from his shoulders, Seamus peered into the corridor beyond.

It was a scene of wreckage. Walls had crumbled, streaks of grime and black char painting that which remained fractured and exposed. The few portraits that had hung upon it were broken and splintered, sagged to the floor like careless discards with their inhabitants fled. No one was there, though. Not a single person remained. The longer Seamus looked the more he realised that it really was no one at all. Not even Neville, who he'd seen fall to the floor. Was that a good thing that he wasn't there anymore? He hoped so.

"Should we…?" Dean asked tentatively, with more hesitancy than he had before when they'd been leaving the common room. Seamus couldn't blame him. He definitely felt as though his own confidence had been thoroughly torn to shreds to be replaced by mindless, thumping fear for his life.

"Maybe we should find someone, like?" Seamus suggested, and was detachedly surprised at how subdued his voice sounded. Dean nodded, however, instantly agreeing with him, and they slowly picked their way through the destroyed corridor.

There were people. They found them, eventually. People that gathered in the courtyard outside the main doors, Seamus could see as they passed through the empty hallways that seemed eerie in that emptiness. The Entrance Hall was dotted with huddled figures, most in their pyjamas or with a jumper thrown about their shoulders. Seamus caught sight of a group of Hufflepuffs and before he even registered who they were Wayne was at their side.

"Oh Merlin, Seamus. Dean." Wayne looked so pale he was almost translucent. "What happened to you? You're a mess."

Seamus spared a glance at himself, another one for Dean. He hadn't noticed until Wayne had pointed it out but his slacks were dusty with filth and a tear had ripped through the forearm of his sleeve, another through the hip of his shirt. Dean looked little better, a smudge of grey dust smeared across his brow giving him a slightly war-torn impression.

Neither answered Wayne, however, for a moment later Seamus found his attention caught by the sight in the courtyard. The gradually welling crowd of students and teachers and what very distinctly sounded like crying. Seamus' gut clenched sickeningly. "Wayne, what happened?"

Wayne followed his gaze with a wavering turn of his head. He looked very young then, far younger than his seventeen years. "Seamus…" He began before trailing off.

He didn't need to say any more. For Seamus, it was his tone that said it all. Something big. Something bad – _terrible_ – had happened. Seamus was dragging Dean out after him, fingers still locked around Dean's arm as they ere, without another word to Wayne.

The crowd didn't part before him, but they didn't need to. There was enough space to see through them, and the Dark Mark hanging overhead was more than enough light to see by. Seamus stumbled to a stop on the outskirts of the crowd as he peered through at the figure they surrounded. He felt his heart plummet to his feet.

The fighting had stopped. It had stopped so abruptly that had the school not been so utterly shaken by the invasion of what could only be Death Eaters it would have been like they'd never been there. And yet despite that, the death they'd left behind them seemed to have ripped the very heart out of the school.

Seamus stared at the closed eyes of Headmaster Dumbledore and despite the fear he'd felt that night already, he suddenly realised what true fear was.

* * *

Sobriety reigned on the trip back to King's Cross. It had pervaded Hogwarts in the days before the end of term and that pervasion had extended to encompass the Hogwarts Express too.

The worst had happened. The unimaginable. Hogwarts had been infiltrated by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's forces, and the feeling of violation, of a sanctuary usurped and exposed, was felt by all. Seamus hadn't even known that night who it was that had invaded, hadn't truly known for sure, but that they were Death Eaters became quickly apparent. Abruptly. Horribly.

But worse than that, possibly the worst that could have happened, Dumbledore had died. No, he hadn't just died. He'd been killed. There was no other explanation for his death, for how he'd fallen from the tower. And that, the loss of the leader of the Light, as it were – that was probably the most terrifying part.

Seamus knew the rumours. He'd heard the speculations that were so riddled with panic that they seemed more the ravings of the hysterical than of genuine suspicions. But even so, he believed them, because there was no opposition to those speculations. That was horrifying too, terrifying, but he believed them. That Snape had…

Seamus hadn't been able to look at the Headmaster's seat since Dumbledore had died. He was scared of what he'd see, of the emptiness left there and what it meant.

The cabin Seamus sat in was cluttered with friends; with Dean, with Wayne and Susan and Hannah and, at least for a time as she sought the feeble solace of their company, Parvati with Lavender in tow. For over an hour it was cramped, yet despite the closeness of the confines it felt more comfortable for it. If nothing else, when the pauses in forced conversation became too long, there was more that likely someone able to fill it.

Seamus was staring out the window when the train pulled into the station. Their cabin was silent once more, but it wasn't a good silence. Seamus sorely wished to break it, but he didn't know what to say. For once, he had absolutely no idea what he could say.

Those lining the platform were a sombre sight. Or maybe that was just Seamus' perception of them. They looked drawn, worried, and as soon as the Express drew to a halt the crowds roiled with motion. Seamus was almost surprised that the families, the parents and siblings and frightened relatives, didn't flood the train in their agitation.

In Seamus' cabin no one moved. They hadn't said their goodbyes because to do so would feel final. Conclusive. For whatever reason, Seamus couldn't shake the feeling that he wouldn't be seeing some of them again, if not forever than at least for a while. It was a realistic thought. Wayne had already said he'd gotten a letter from his panicked parents at home asking him to return before the end of term. He said he wasn't sure he'd even be coming back next year at the rate things were going.

For that was the truth of it. People were scared. Seamus himself was scared, and not only for him. He was scared for his brother, who wouldn't have the flimsy protection of Hogwarts. For his friends and their families should they extricate themselves from the school to remain together. Hell, he was even scared for his own family, though he didn't want to be. He still hated them fiercely most of the time, but… but he was worried for them too.

And for Dean. Seamus was very worried for Dean, and for Dean's entire family. Everyone knew of the treatment of Muggleborns in the First Wizarding War. Dean wasn't expressly a Muggleborn, and Seamus had talked to him of the possibility of his dad being a wizard before he'd been murdered, but there was no proving it. As far as the world knew – as far as the Death Eaters knew – Dean was as Muggleborn as they came. And that made him vulnerable.

Seamus didn't talk to Dean about it. He didn't know if he'd be able to get the words out as more than a mindless babble. But he looked at Dean, watched him throughout the trip in desperate hope, and when Dean caught him doing so he could see the like-mindedness in his eyes. Dean knew. He knew only too well and in his eyes Seamus could see he was terrified, even if he didn't say as much.

With slow motions, they all began to pull their trunks from the overhead compartments. Seamus unconsciously steadied Hannah as she tottered slightly, distracted by her thoughts and nearly falling over beneath the sudden weight of her luggage. "You alright?" He asked. Hannah didn't reply but offered him a small smile that fled almost as soon as it arose.

They made it onto the platform in ensuing silence, the quietude that had pervaded the train following them as it never had before. Some few talked but most reserved their exchanges for whispers or weighted glances. Out on the platform, that quietness was disrupted by gasps of relief and murmured conversations as students hastened to their parents' sides.

Seamus didn't look for his own parents. He didn't expect to see them. He knew Eoghan would come, but he didn't look for him either. Instead, Seamus turned to his friends and found them all of a similar mind, standing still and silent and watching alongside their trunks.

Susan was the first to speak. She cleared her throat, took a breath and huffed it out in a gushing sigh. "Well. I guess… we'll maybe see each other in September?"

"If not before,' Hannah said quietly, glancing at Susan almost pleadingly.

"Of course. If not before." She turned towards Hannah and wrapped her in a quick embrace. Then she turned to Wayne, to Seamus and Dean, and did just the same. "You make sure you write, now. All of you."

"Of course," Seamus said with an attempt at a smile into her shoulder as she squeezed him. "Would you like my essay-length letters again, like?"

It was a running joke between them, for just as Seamus found himself babbling mindlessly at times, he often got carried away with himself when writing letters and the next moment found he'd written pages of parchment that was stacked together so thickly he almost couldn't fold it into an envelope. Susan had expressed her exasperation for that very excessiveness in the past.

Not this time, though. Instead, Seamus felt her smile into his shoulder as she squeezed him again even tighter in a way that he didn't feel embarrassed to receive at all. "Yeah, I'd like that," she said. And then she was leaving.

Hannah followed shortly after, and then Wayne, who wrapped Seamus in his own hug just a little longer to whisper a fierce goodbye into his ear. "Make sure you keep in touch, okay?"

Seamus clung to him in return, closing his eyes briefly. "You're not coming back next year, are you?"

Wayne didn't speak, but the slight, feeble shake of his head was answer enough. Seamus hadn't thought so. Wayne's parents were kind, and had always been protective of him. Seamus knew that even if he knew little enough of them. Really, given what had just happened at Hogwarts barely days before, he couldn't blame them for that protectiveness.

Then Wayne was gone too, and Seamus was left standing alongside Dean in the midst of a slowly thinning crowd, watching him leave. The Hogwarts Express puffed at their side, billowing smoke in lazy comfort that juxtaposed the unease that otherwise permeated the air.

They stood for a long moment until Dean shifted and half turned. Seamus followed the line of his sight to see the tall figure of Dean's mum standing a little off to the side. Surprisingly, she'd found her way to Eoghan's side, and they appeared in deep conversation. Deep, serious conversation by the looks of things. Seamus felt something in his stomach tighten. Was Eoghan telling her what had happened? What was going on? Being Muggle as she was, Dean's mum likely didn't know.

"Hey, Seam," Dean murmured at his side, drawing Seamus' attention back towards him. "Can I talk to you for a second?"

At Seamus' nod, he led them across the platform, not towards Eoghan and his mum but further from the crowd and into relative privacy. He even went so far as to slip around one of the wide support pillars to hide them from view a little. As soon as he did, as soon as Seamus drew to a stop beside him, he was a little surprised when Dean immediately wrapped him into an embrace.

Seamus didn't question it, though. Without thought, despite the fact that in the past it would have been so strange to be on the receiving end, he wrapped his arms around Dean's waist in return. Tightly, and then even more tightly when the sudden desire to never let go arose within him.

Dean had dropped his head onto Seamus' shoulder, forehead resting heavily. When he spoke, his words were muffled by Seamus' shirt. "Hey Seam?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm kind of really scared."

Seamus closed his eyes, tightening his hold even further. They'd never been much for expressing their feelings in the past, and it had only really been that year – with the exception of Seamus' cataclysmic outburst in fifth year – that they'd even truly begun to try. Talking about feelings… it was embarrassing. Dean was Seamus' friend, his best friend and the person he'd liked as significantly more than a friend for years, but they hadn't been prone to open admissions. Nothing like what Dean said now.

At the understanding and clogging emotion that welled within Seamus with the Dean's words, he wondered why they never had. It felt so right to simply _know_. To know for sure, no guessing involved.

"Me too," Seamus admitted, and even that was easy. Easier now than he'd ever expected it to be. "I'm, like – I'm really scared for you, Dean."

"For me," Dean said, not so much to question but to echo. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"It's not going to be safe for anyone," Dean mumbled into his shoulder. "I might not know much about the First Wizarding War, but I listened to what everyone was saying at school. It'll be dangerous for everyone, even purebloods, and you're a halfblood."

"And you're a Muggleborn," Seamus said, and felt a pain stab through his chest at the thought. _Fuck, but it's scary,_ he thought with an unvoiced whimper. Everyone knew what Death Eaters did to Muggleborns.

Dean made a noise into his shoulder, indecipherable but likely not needing to be understood. "What do I do?"

"I don't know."

"What, do I just go back to school next year like normal?"

"I – I don't know."

"Will they come to the school again? Without Dumbledore there, are they able to now? Can they get in and attack us again?"

Seamus had to bite back the urge to really whimper this time. "I don't know," he whispered again. He was sure he was crushing the air from Dean's lungs for how tightly he held him. There was no assurance that everything _would_ be worse, but by the same token, there was very little chance that it would remain the same. If the Death Eaters were going to target the school, if they were bold enough to make an attempt on Dumbledore's life – no, to _kill_ Dumbledore – then what would it mean for the coming year? Seamus almost didn't know. He had absolutely no idea at all and not a whole lot of confidence for his ignorance.

They stood for a time, simply hugging one another, and Seamus had the thought that he didn't care that he kept Eoghan waiting, that Dean's mum might be wondering where her son was. He never wanted to let go, and strangely, from the feel of it, Dean didn't either. Slowly, however, eventually, Dean did draw away. Just a little, and still maintaining a hold on Seamus' shoulders as he took half a step back.

When Seamus looked up at him, it was to see his eyes a little wet. He wasn't crying, but the emotion was definitely there, apparent through the thinly veiled fear. Seamus curled his hands into Dean's shirt. He really, really didn't want to let go.

"You'll make sure you write to me, won't you?" Dean asked, his voice cracking a little. "Just so I know you're… so I know what's going on?"

Seamus nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, of course, like. Every day, if I have to."

Dean's smile was small but definitely there. "Sounds good to me."

"And you too."

"And me too." Dean paused, seemed to struggle with himself, then spoke. "Seam, if I don't come back next year –"

"Please," Seamus blurted out.

Dean paused once more, confusion touching his expression. Seamus didn't blame him. He didn't even know what he was pleading for. Then Dean continued, his voice low and stronger than it had been. He even bowed his head a little towards Seamus' as though he was telling a secret. "If it happens, if I can't come back to school or I have to – I don't know, if I have to run away or –"

"I'll come with you," Seamus said immediately. Friend or something else, there was no way he would let Dean go alone.

Dean shook his head. "No. You can't come."

"Like hell I can't."

"Seam, it would be bad enough just me –"

"It would be worse as 'just you', like," Seamus said, his words clipped. His fingers twisted into Dean's shirt and he could feel a frown growing heavily on his brow.

But Dean was shaking his head once more. "You think I'd want you to come along with something like that? Besides, you honestly think Eoghan would let you come?"

"But –"

"Seamus, please. I'll… I'm not saying it's going to happen, but if it does I'll keep in contact with you."

"How?" Seamus asked, and was a little surprised to hear his voice waver.

Dean shrugged. "I don't know. I'll work out something."

At that moment, Seamus knew that Dean would do it. That Seamus could bombard him with his presence and sleep on Dean's floor in his room for weeks and Dean would still make sure he went by himself. The passing thought, that it was Dean's ridiculous chivalry coming into play once more, was only frustrating for its accuracy.

And somehow, despite it all, despite his fear and the anger for his fear that rose within Seamus, he couldn't stop himself. He couldn't let Dean go without at least showing him everything, even if he couldn't tell him. Finally unlatching his hands from Dean's shirt, he reached for his head instead. Ignoring the brief confusion that flickered across Dean's faze as he did so, Seamus wrapped his hands around the back of Dean's neck, dragging him down towards him, and pressed their lips together in a fierce kiss.

It was a little messy. A little awkward for the fact that Dean seemed too surprised to even respond at first, and very desperate. But Seamus didn't let him go, only dragged Dean closer, and after another awkward moment, Dean was kissing him back.

That was surprising. Surprising to Seamus too, this time. When Seamus realised that he was, that Dean was actually kissing him back, he was wholly surprised. He hadn't expected that at all, hadn't even known what he hoped to achieve with his kiss, but it wasn't reciprocation. Dean, however, unfroze from his own bewilderment and in an unexpected show of eagerness, acceptance even, wrapped his arms back around Seamus in an embrace that was somehow different to the one that he'd given Seamus moments before. It felt different. Warmer. _More_.

And their kiss. Their kiss became somehow deeper, less messy, and warmer too. The press of Dean's lips against Seamus' own, the tipping of his head to adjust the angle, the parting of his lips and – oh Merlin, but he actually had Dean's tongue in his mouth and that was entirely unexpected. Any thoughts of anger dissolved to be replaced by a fierce longing the likes of which Seamus hadn't let himself feel before that. He didn't think he ever wanted it to end.

And yet it did. Of course it did eventually, when the Hogwarts Express uttered a sporadic toot and recalled them to reality. Seamus reluctantly drew away from Dean, panting slightly, and blinked suddenly heavy eyes up at him.

Slowly, Dean opened his own eyes to stare back down at him. Seamus was momentarily lost in the deep darkness of his gaze, in the feel of Dean's breath upon his lips, closer than he'd ever been before. His mournfulness had briefly faded into something else, and that something else was wondrous.

"I like you," Seamus found himself saying. His voice was a little hoarse, almost a croak, but he didn't care. "I forgot to tell you. For, like, two years. I really like you."

Dean's eyes widened slightly, his eyebrows rising just a fraction. Then a smile touched his lips and he murmured a word that was barely a sigh. "Brilliant." Then he leaned back into Seamus to press their lips together in another kiss. It was different this time, softer and gentler. In Seamus' opinion, that didn't make it any less. Not at all.

Unfortunately, it just made it even harder to let Dean go.

* * *

A/N: Hi everyone!

Yes, it finally happened. I hope you liked the progression towards what, let's face it, we all knew would come. Did you like it? Didn't you? Any thoughts on the story so far? If so, please leave a review. Thank you to the lovely people who have done so already (ohmygod, **EstherOfPersia** , it's so lovely to see you!). You're fantastic!


	14. Chapter 14 - Seventh Year - Part i

**Chapter 14: Seventh Year - Part I**

The old grandfather clock ticked slowly and loudly in the otherwise silent living room. Dean had always loved that clock. It was an antique passed down over generations, his mum had always said, and in the vastness of the Gryffindor common room he'd missed the comforting _tick-tick-tick_ it constantly flicked.

Dean missed the whole living room when he was at Hogwarts for that matter. He'd spent so much of his years growing up within its walls that it had become synonymous with safety and comfort. All of it was achingly familiar – the large fireplace that consumed most of one wall beneath pictures in simple frames standing testimony to the years of his family's growth. The wide, dark couches of which all of them had their own designated cushions – not officially designated but simply always assumed. The modest television with Keira's mess of video games wedged beneath the standing cabinet, the coffee table stacked with more coasters than would ever possibly be needed given that the small size of the room would hardly be capable of fitting so people in it.

As Dean sat on the couch on _his_ cushion alongside every member of his family in their own seats, he catalogued the room. He recorded every detail as he'd been recording those of each from all morning, even if it was so committed to memory already that he would likely never forget it. He didn't know the next time he would see it, after all.

The weight of Seamus' most recent letter sat heavily in his pocket, seeming to burn a hole through the denim of his jeans. The tone of the writing, the rapid, slanted scrawl that was even messier than Seamus' handwriting usually was, bespoke his urgency and fear as readily as the words themselves.

 _"… fucking insane, Dean. The whole house was on fire. I don't know if any of them made it out, but when the Aurors finally came they said they found bodies. I don't know how many, but people actually died. That was barely a street away, Dean, and it fucking terrified me. Lincoln was a Muggleborn, I'm sure of it, so that would make that the third one this week…"_

Seamus didn't say it expressly, but Dean knew he was scared for him. That he feared for Dean as much as Dean was terrified for his situation, for his family, for Seamus in return. That thought ached, stinging with a sharp vicious and unshakeable pain. He wished he could have seen his best friend, his dearest friend who had become so much more than that, before he left. The last time he'd seen him… had it really only been three days ago? It felt like longer.

Dean regretted that he hadn't realised earlier. He regretted that he'd been so blind to what now seemed like very obvious clues that Seamus meant more to him than simply a friend. If Dean had realised sooner, if he'd realised the utterly obvious that was _so_ obvious he constantly kicked himself for _not_ realising, they would have had more time together. Just a little more time

But they wouldn't. Not now and not for perhaps a long time. Dean knew what he had to do. He knew, even if it pained him. Even if it hurt so terribly to leave, to turn away from both Seamus and his family. Seamus would be horrified when he got the letter Dean had already posted to his brother's house, the letter that told him he had to go, and that he was sorry but Seamus wasn't going to come with him. Dean couldn't drag him into that.

Just like he couldn't drag his family into it, either.

"So you're telling us," Andrew said slowly from the couch opposite him, breaking the static silence had statically pervaded since Dean's explanation, "that you honestly think it would be for the best if you left?"

Dean swallowing tightly, fighting back the pain that pleaded he retract his words. The expression on his mum's face, the disbelief in Andrew's words and the wide-eyed stares he beheld from his siblings hurt enough as it was. He nodded tightly. "It's for the best."

"It most certainly is not," his mum hissed. She was sitting rigidly straight, eyes narrowed as they had been since Dean had first started speaking. There was a subtle shift, now though; not confusion but anger tightened her expression. "Dean, that is not going to happen."

"It is," Dean said. He swallowed once more, glancing between his mum and Andrew once more. "I'm telling you, not asking for your permission."

"This is ridiculous," his mum said. At her side, Andrew was frowning and nodding his fervent agreement.

"I don't understand," his youngest sister June said in her eternally quiet voice. "What's happening? Dean, are you really leaving?"

Dean turned towards her, towards Keira and Millie alongside her. They were all staring at him with varying degrees of confusion, worry and fear. Millie didn't appear to have blinked at all for the past ten minutes. He wished he hadn't had to tell them. He wished he didn't have to hurt any of them. "Yeah, June. I have to go away for a little while."

"But why," June began, only for Dean's mum to override her. "You're not going anywhere, Dean."

"Mum," Dean sighed.

"No, Dean. Whatever you think, whatever misguided sense of martyrdom you're striving for –"

"It's not martyrdom," Dean said. "It's logical. I can't stay here if it's going to put you all in danger."

"What's martyrdom?" June asked plaintively. Her question passed unnoticed.

"You can, and you will," Dean's mum said. "We're a family, Dean, and we stick together. Through anything and everything that pits itself against us."

Her voice was as forbidding as her gaze, and Dean had bowed before before. Not often, for Julie Thomas wasn't one to aggressively assert herself on frequent occasion, but Dean knew that when she did she didn't take no for an answer.

Not this time, though. This time Dean wouldn't yield. "I know. And I would, at any other time. But not this time, Mum. It's way too dangerous for me to stay here."

"Can we all go somewhere else, then?" Millie asked.

Andrew nodded. "Yes. If we can't stay here then we'll just go somewhere else."

Dean shook his head. "It doesn't work like that. I know I'll have to go underground, into hiding –"

"We'll go with you," Millie cut in shortly.

" – and I can't bring you all into that." He shook his head again. "I won't."

"You're being selfish, Dean," his mum said, her voice hard and almost cold. To anyone else, she might have sounded cruel. Harsh, even. Unforgiving. But Dean knew otherwise. He knew his mum had realised he wasn't going to budge, so she was pulling out all stops.

 _It's not going to work_ , he thought to himself. _Not this time_.

"Maybe," he said, lifting his chin defiantly. "But I need to do this."

"No you don't, Dean," Andrew said. He leant forwards in his seat, reaching a hand across the distance between them. "You don't have to do this, and certainly not alone. Please, don't be so stubborn."

Andrew really was Dean's dad in all but blood. In many ways, that only made the situation even harder. Dean shook his head. "But I do."

"Dean –" Millie began.

"I'm a wizard, and You-Know-Who's Death Eaters will come after _me_ when they find out. Not all of you."

"You don't know they will though, do you?" Andrew asked. His brow was wrinkled in a worried frown that hadn't eased for a full half an hour. "There's no guarantee that they'll come after you."

"They're hunting down Muggleborns," Dean explained, not for the first time.

"But… but didn't you say that you thought your Dad wasn't?" Keira asked tentatively. "Didn't you say you thought he was a wizard too?"

Dean nodded heavily. He was exhausted from talking, exhausted with trying to push for something that he physically ached to avoid. It was going to happen, he knew; he just wished his family would accept it so they didn't have to part on a bad note. "I think so. Maybe. But there's no way to prove it."

"But surely they can't just convict you, even if their prejudice was somehow warranted," Andrew said, straightening and his frown deepening further. "It's unjust and immoral –"

"You-Know-Who doesn't exactly have an accurate moral compass," Dean said heavily. He'd heard all of the stories, after all. He knew well enough. "He doesn't care who, just what. The best thing I could do is disappear."

"You're not going anywhere, Dean," his mum repeated for what could have been the hundredth time that morning already. He drew his gaze towards her for the hundred-and-first. "You're just a boy. You will not go gallivanting off on your own."

"I'm legally an adult in the Wizarding world," Dean said with a weak smile.

"I don't care what legalities apply in your world," she snapped back. Actually snapped, and it was that more than anything that told Dean how worried she was. "I'm your mum and that means that until I consider you capable enough, I'm the one responsible for your wellbeing."

"So who's responsible for yours?" Dean said. "Because You-Know-Who and his Death Eaters, they don't just go after Muggleborns. They go for their whole family. I'm not going to put you all in danger because of me."

"We can protect ourselves," Andrew said quietly.

"Not against magic."

"Then we'll seek higher order. Government protection –"

"And if the government is corrupt?" Dean interrupted. He'd been reading the _Daily Prophet_. He knew what had happened to Scrimgeour after his brief and fiery term. The ex-Minister had been disposed of when the Ministry infiltrators had finished with him. If the Wizarding Ministry was no longer safe, Dean didn't have much hope for the Muggle one. Wizards had _magic_. How could Muggles possibly hope to stand against that?

"We'll come up with something, then," Andrew reattempted. "If we have to, we'll go into hiding with you."

"And destroy your lives?" Dean shook his head. "No. You and mum would have to quit your jobs, Andrew, and Millie, Keira and June would have to drop out of school."

"There are more important things that work and school," his mum said, and her voice had grown harsh.

Dean had to close his eyes at that. He'd known they would respond like this, that his family would stop the world to make sure he was alright, that he was as safe and protected as humanly possible. They were simply like that, and always had been. It was one of the countless things Dean loved so much about them; in their family, _family_ came first. It was one of the things that had baffled Dean so much about Seamus' family.

Or most of Seamus' family. Another sting speared through Dean's chest at the thought of leaving. At least Seamus would have Eoghan.

"I'm not going to do that to you," he said quietly, shunting thoughts of Seamus from his mind out of sheer necessity. "And again I'm telling you, not asking for your permission."

"Dean," his mum began.

"Mum." Dean opened his eyes and met her stare for stare. Seamus had always said he looked like his mum, that they shared their eyes, and for the resistance in her own that he could see he could believe that. They really were alike. Both utterly unwavering in their decisions. "I've got to leave before school starts back."

"You're not going to school?" Andrew asked, a touch of surprise in his voice that alleviated his frown slightly. "I thought that, since you got your books and all –"

Dean shook his head. "No. No, I don't think it's safe for me. Not at Hogwarts."

"Not at Hogwarts?" His mum ground out, voice harsh. "You always said Hogwarts was the safest place in the world."

"Well, it was until Headmaster Dumbledore was killed by the person who's now taking his place."

His words clearly stunned them all. That little fact Dean had managed to keep from them; they'd known Dumbledore was dead, as it was impossible for them not to be aware of the fact, but the rumours as to how it had happened had remained only rumours. Or at least they had for everyone but those associated with the Order of the Phoenix. They knew the truth and, being Harry's friend as he was, Dean knew too. He'd known Harry for long enough, known him to be proven right when others deemed him wrong, to put his confidence in him.

"This is madness," Dean's mum said. "How is such a disaster even being able to occur?"

"Honestly?" Dean replied, feeling the heaviness even more profoundly for the despair of the situation. "Because the people who would police it are under Death Eater control now, would be my best guess."

"This is _dangerous_. What about the students going back to school? Does Seamus know?"

Dean winced. Of course Seamus knew about Hogwarts. Dean _knew_ that Seamus knew, and it hurt terribly because he also knew that Seamus was going back anyway. Dean didn't want that. God, but he was so scared for Seamus returning to school. But just as Dean knew he had to leave, had to disappear – for both his own safety and for that of everyone who knew him – Seamus said he had to go too. That with the pureblooded family as he had, with having already enrolled as he'd done, it would be more suspicious for him not to.

"Besides," he'd said on the day they'd gone to Diagon Alley together, wandering the streets so closely that their arms were practically glued together. "Someone's got to go back as representatives for our year, right? Otherwise it'll be just Neville, like."

"I don't think that's really the right reason to go back," Dean had replied with a frown.

"Maybe not," Seamus laughed, and it had almost sounded genuine. "But I've still got to. Got to stick around for the rest of the younger kids going back, like. Right?"

Dean hadn't known what to say to that. He knew Seamus was scared, and that neither of them were fighters. The previous year, when the Death Eaters had invaded and they'd been so utterly helpless, had more than proved that. What could Seamus – what could _either_ of them – possibly do?

But Seamus had stuck to his decision. Just as Dean knew that he would stick to his own. "Seamus knows," he said quietly, finally his thoughts. "He knows, but he also knows he's got to got back anyway. Just like I know I've got to leave."

"You _do_ _not_ , Dean," his mum said once more. It was beginning to sound like a broken record they played over and over. And endless revisiting of the same conversation. "You're not going anywhere."

As Dean met her gaze, as he turned to Andrew with his quiet, steadfast determination then drew his eyes to his sisters, he knew they wouldn't stand for it. He knew they wouldn't let him leave, not even for their own safety.

 _I knew they wouldn't_ , he thought, pressing his lips together to stifle the beginnings of a heartfelt sob. An actually sob, because it was so… it was just so... _I knew they wouldn't just take it_.

Dean hadn't wanted to resort to drastic measures. Really, he hadn't. It would have been so much easier if his family had known he was going and had accepted it rather than thinking of him as a runaway. But there was no other option, and the acceptance that tightened his gut told Dean that he'd known it all along. "If that's how you feel about it," he said, surreptitiously slipping his wand from his pocket, "then I'm sorry."

It was apparent that none of them knew what he was talking about. That none of them guessed he would ever do such a thing as to use magic against them. It hurt Dean even more to simply contemplate it, but he knew what he must do. They wouldn't accept it, otherwise. Forcing it upon them was his only option.

"Dean," June whispered quietly from his side, her eyes wide and dark as she met his gaze. "Please don't leave."

"I'm sorry," Dean said, speaking through the catch in his voice. Then he raised his wand.

Half a minute later and Dean was standing in the middle of the living room in which his family lay slumped against one another in a magical sleep. Not knocked out, for Dean couldn't do that to them, but definitely asleep. They would wake up in an hour or so, and that would be more than enough time for him to get away. He would have Apparated halfway across the country by then.

He spared only a moment to look upon them, upon the frown his mum still wore even in sleep, Andrew where his head rocked on her shoulder, and his brother and sisters slumped like limp dolls with calm, quiet breathing. Dean wished he could take a snapshot – or better yet, paint a picture – to remember them by. He'd miss them sorely and he didn't even know how long he'd be gone. Would he ever come back? Dean wasn't sure if he'd survive a war of the Wizarding world. He was, after all, effectively a Muggleborn.

It was a struggle to turn from the living room, but eventually Dean managed. With slow steps that rapidly grew into a run, into a flight of escape, he lept up the stairwell to his room, snatched up his rucksack that he'd stashed earlier that morning with the bare essentials, and took off from the house. Breaking into a run as he hastened down the footpath from the front door, bypassing his family's minimalistic front garden and spilling out onto the road beyond, Dean didn't look back at the house he'd grown up in, the one that still held his family that would wake so soon to find him gone.

He was leaving them. His family, his poor mum, Seamus…

At midnight the previous night, Dean had received an owl from Seamus with the news of his neighbour Lincoln Viscount's death. Less than twelve hours later, Dean had made his decision and was fleeing home. It was the best decision, even if it hurt to do so. It was the right one.

* * *

Eoghan wrapped Seamus in an embrace so tight that for a moment Seamus couldn't breathe. He was far from the only one on the platform who did such; even in the smothered view that Seamus had over his brother's shoulder he could see every family squeezing their children with engulfing hugs as though they longed to never let them go.

"I can't believe I'm letting you go back to school," Eoghan muttered in his ear. He drew away slightly, affixing Seamus with a wavering stare. "I just can't believe I'm so stupid as to let you convince me this was okay."

"Don't be so hard on yourself, like," Seamus said as easily as he could manage. "You know that I'd go anyway even if you didn't want me to."

Eoghan sighed, the sound barely audible over the surrounding noise of the crowd. "Yeah, I know. You're a stubborn little shit, like."

"No less than you are."

"I don't think that's a good thing, you know."

"Probably not."

They shared a rueful smile before Eoghan was locking Seamus in an embrace once more. In the tightness of his hold, Seamus could feel every tremble of terror, every ounce of dreadful fear for what was to come as it echoed Seamus' own to a T. He was scared. Seamus was so terribly scared, and it wasn't just because he was leaving Eoghan behind – though that did frighten him given that Eoghan worked in the Ministry. What if something happened to him? He was right in the snake pit.

Seamus was scared for so many things that he could barely let himself acknowledge them. He was scared to leave Eoghan, true, but he was scared to return to Hogwarts even more. To live under Snape as their headmaster who he _knew_ was a Death Eater, the Death Eater who had killed Dumbledore. He was scared of what would become of him and all the rest of the kids who returned alongside him. Would the remaining teachers at the school be able to protect them from the threat of the Death Eaters and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's forces? Seamus was terrified of what was happening to the world as it seemed to be tearing apart at the seams.

And he was scared of what had happened to Dean. Even now, days after Dean had disappeared with only a _fucking_ _letter_ sent to Seamus to explain his decision and it's necessity, he still couldn't believe he was gone. Seamus knew he had to go back to Hogwarts, though he had to convince himself of that time and time again, but he would have dropped that need in a heartbeat to be with Dean.

 _How could he just up and leave me like that?_ Seamus thought, not for the first time nor even the thousandth. He'd had that recurring thought at almost every second since Dean had left, and it only grew more and more desperate with each repetition. He regretted many things, but not being with Dean sat primary on that list. He regretted that they hadn't spent more time together when they could have over the holidays; that he hadn't simply held Dean's hand more, or listened to him laugh, or watch him draw. That Seamus hadn't told Dean his feelings a long, long time ago so they _could_ have had that time. He regretted that he hadn't known until the day they'd climbed from the Hogwarts Express that Dean had even a shadow of Seamus' feelings for him to return.

Seamus regretted many things, but first and foremost: why did Dean have to leave so shortly after Seamus had realised how much he loved him?

Squeezing Eoghan in return in the fiercely tight embrace, he was only shaken from his thoughts and the hold by the bellowing toot of the train behind him. Five minutes it meant, he knew. Eoghan knew too, for he finally managed unlocked his arms and take a step away from Seamus. He sniffled, almost as though he was about to cry, and Seamus didn't blame him for a second. It was always emotional at the moment. For all of them. Crying… there was nothing embarrassing about that anymore, no more than it was for Seamus to admit he was scared. Everyone was that, too.

"You take care of yourself, like," Eoghan said, affection ringing through the conspiratorial Gaelic he slipped into as he ruffled Seamus' hair. His smile stuttered only slightly. "If I don't hear from you for a week, I swear I'm taking the first portkey I can get my hands on to Hogsmeade."

Seamus failed in his attempt to chuckle. "Yeah, alright. You write to me too, like. Same goes for you."

"Yeah, I hear you." Eoghan nodded. Then he patted Seamus' shoulder and urged him towards the train. Seamus turned, reaffirming his grasp on the handle of his trunk, and made his way through the clogging crowds to the nearest carriage.

He was almost at the carriage when he heard his name called out in a voice that wasn't Eoghan's. Not Eoghan's but familiar nonetheless. Incredulously, Seamus made a slow turn, eyes bliwing. He barely caught a glimpse of his dad before he crashed into him.

"Thank God, I thought we might have been too late to see you," he said, crushing Seamus to him in a clasp that winded him like a blow.

Seamus was frozen. He was unable to even recoil from the sudden and entirely unexpected arrival of his dad. He hadn't spoken to him – to any of his family besides Eoghan, Caitlin and Aimee – in months. That his dad was here…

"Dad," he struggled pronounce through his dad's embrace. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm sorry," his dad choked into his shoulder. "I'm sorry I – I'm sorry everything's gone so wrong. I'm sorry that I can't do better, and that everything happened –"

"Seamus!"

His dad's gushing was interrupted by another cry, and a second later Seamus' mam was crashing into them both and wrapping her arms around them. Seamus hadn't even the breath to exclaim in redoubled surprise – because his dad was one thing, but his mam entirely another – as she crushed them in her grasp.

" _A leanbh_ , I'm so sorry," she said, and as Seamus managed to twist enough to see her face he could make out the tears already springing from her eyes. "We're so sorry."

"Mam, what are you –?"

"We did terribly, Seamus," his dad said, still speaking into his shoulder. "I know we did, and I'm sorry I – that we couldn't be better."

Seamus was stunned. He didn't know what to think, let alone what to say. The last time he'd seen his parents he'd hated them. Very definitely hated them, too, because they were his parents and they should love him no matter what, regardless of his sexuality. In the months since then, Seamus had grown only more grounded in his opinion on the matter; that he shouldn't have to change for them, nor for anyone else. That they should have stood by him throughout.

What was going on? Seamus didn't know how to handle it. He hadn't prepared for it even slightly, and in the midst of the terror that already gripped him in an incessant hold, it was all too much to even attempt to understand the _why_. If Seamus were to hazard a guess, it would be that they were terrified by the war as everyone else was and wanted to make amends, but even that was incredible. His family was proud, his mam especially so. That she was bending her neck at all was…

"What's going on?" Seamus finally managed to ask.

His mam had managed to get a hold of herself just a little. Enough that she stood a little taller, that she was able to wipe a hand across her face and smear the tears flowing, though her other still clutched Seamus' shoulder as though she had no intention of letting go. "I'm sorry, Seamus. We have made a disaster of this. Of everything."

"What do you -?"

"We'll try to fix it," she continued as Seamus' dad nodded into his shoulder once more. "I'm not – the family, they won't… it will be a struggle, like, but we'll fix this. We'll change this for you, Seamus." Before Seamus could even think to grow affronted, to exclaim that _he_ wasn't going to change no matter what, she was continuing. "We'll change for you, Seamus. I'll – I'll make sure we can accept it, like. You shouldn't have to change who you are, even if – even if there are some in our family who will always have a problem." Then, quite unexpectedly, she leant towards him and pressed a fierce kiss on his cheek.

Seamus didn't know what to say. He realised his eyes were blurry but didn't know what to do about it. He'd abandoned his family because they'd abandoned him first. How was he supposed to respond to the thought that his mam and dad might be prepared to pave their way back to him?

Seamus didn't know. He didn't know anything. And the resounding toot of the train meant he didn't have the time to think about it.

His parents clearly realised it too, for his dad drew away at the same time as his mam leant in to press another rough kiss against his cheek. His dad clasped a hand around the back of his head and held it tightly. "I'm sorry we didn't come sooner. We didn't, like – we weren't even sure if you were going to go back to school this year."

"Of course I am," Seamus said numbly.

His dad nodded, face tightening in pain. "I know. You look after yourself."

"Stay safe," his mam said from his side, her arm tightening in a final squeeze.

Seamus left them in a daze. He still didn't know what to say, what to do, how to think, so he didn't say anything. Still, it was with many a glance over his shoulder in the direction his parent stood, both in tears now, as they waved goodbye with trembling fingers. Over their shoulder, just a little way back, Eoghan stood and watched them before raising his gaze to meet Seamus'. The question was clear in his eyes.

Forgiveness? Seamus didn't know if he could do that. Not so suddenly and not with such an unexpected change of heart. But just the sight of them standing there, struggling to hold themselves together and _actually there,_ told him that he couldn't hate them either. Maybe he never truly had.

The heart was such a fickle thing. Even more so when rocking on a boat of near constant terror.

Climbing the steps of the carriage with an awkward tugging of his trunk, Seamus made his way inside. He wasn't entirely sure who he expected to see as he trundled his way through the hallway, passing cabins that were just noticeably barer than they had been in previous years. Seamus wasn't even entirely sure who from his year was returning. Dean… Dean wasn't, and that seemed to be the worst absence of all. Wayne too, Seamus knew, and Harry, Ron and Hermione. Who else?

He found his friends. Surprisingly, it was all of his remaining friends, already packed in the cabin together. More surprisingly than that, alongside Susan and Hannah, across from Parvati and Lavender as her constant companion, sat Neville, Ginny and her blonde-haired friend Luna Lovegood who Seamus remembered from their DA meetings.

At the sight of him at the door, Susan raised her head instinctively. She was beckoning him inside in an instant, and though it was a tight fit, they made it so.

"You came?" Neville asked as Seamus took a seat beside Parvati. He sounded almost questioning, as though he was clarifying that Seamus was indeed staying for the long haul.

Seamus nodded as, with final toot, the train rocked into motion. "Yeah. I came."

"Few enough of us," Ginny said quietly.

Seamus glanced towards her vaguely, his mind still on his parents though he struggled to turn it away. He didn't dislike Ginny, he knew, even when he'd resented her for dating Dean. Seeing the sombre cast to her expression he felt only sorry for her. Not only her brother but also Harry, her boyfriend, had all but disappeared. How would that be?

Shit. It would be absolute shit. Seamus was having enough trouble with the realisation that Dean was gone and he couldn't help him. Really, he almost begrudged his parents showing up, despite what it possibly meant; he didn't need something else loaded on top of his already struggling thoughts.

To the familiar swaying of the train picking up speed, they fell into idle if subdued conversation. About the summer, though it held a falsely jovial ring to it. About Ginny's brother's wedding – which had been crashed, Seamus recalled awkwardly just after he'd raised the subject. What a horrible end to a wedding.

Susan spoke about Wayne, having caught up with him the most recently out of them all. Hannah fell into a half-hearted discussion with Neville about Herbology, though it seemed very forced, and for once, Lavender and Parvati weren't a mess of giggles, though they did their best to keep up rapid-fire conversation. Seamus was grateful to them for that. It gave an impression of normalcy.

Half an hour into the trip, they might have even passed into a vague semblance of comfort had not the tall, looming figure of an unfamiliar man appeared in their doorway. He didn't quite pause in step, but the way he walked was slow enough that his appearance drew the abruptly silenced attention of all the cabin's occupants.

Seamus felt his blood run cold at the sight of the man. He was ridiculously tall, with wide, sloping shoulders and dark hair slightly receding. Anarrow-eyed gaze and thin mouth tipped downwards as though disgruntled with what he saw as he turned his gaze briefly upon their cabin through the glass window of the door. He was a big man, enormous even, and could likely break them all into pieces with his fists as easily as he could blast them with the wand he held in his hand.

There was a moment in which they all stared, the strange, unfamiliar man and everyone in Seamus' cabin. Then the touch of downturned lips quirked slightly, cruelly, and the man raised his wand to tap beneath his eye before pointing it at them indicatively. The message couldn't have been clearer had he spoken:

 _I'm watching you._

Then he passed. The dark cloud of his presence, however, didn't leave with him.

"Who was that?" Lavender whispered into their frozen silence.

Seamus shook his head. "I've never seen him before but… you don't think, like –"

"He couldn't be, surely," Susan said, though she didn't sound convinced.

"Surely," Hannah breathed in barely a whisper. "Surely not."

Not a one of them believed their own words for a second. They didn't need to have looked to the man's forearm for evidence of a skull and snake tattoo. Somehow, instinctively, like a rabbit recognising the threat of a fox, they knew what he was.

Seamus abruptly couldn't find anything else to say, in comfort or even conversation. His confidence that they'd be able to survive that year had abruptly waned and it didn't seem likely to wax again.

* * *

A/N: A relatively short chapter, I'm afraid, but I'm making up for it! I should be posting another chapter in a few days again. Keep an eye out, dear readers ;)


	15. Chapter 15 - Seventh Year - Part II

**Chapter 15: Seventh Year - Part II**

With a grunt, Dean pushed himself to sitting. It was still dark in the closeted room, but that meant little. With shuttered windows to stave off the sun – though intentions of creating a muted ambiance was hardly the primary objective – it could have been midday and Dean wouldn't have noticed.

Not that it was. He knew it wasn't. Dean hadn't slept for more than a few hours at a time since… he couldn't remember, but it felt like a long time.

For months he'd been on the run. Or in hiding at least, because at first there hadn't been much running involved. Using what savings he had and sticking to inconspicuousness of the Muggle world, he hopped between run-down hostels and bunked in rooms that were little more than stacks of mattresses that he shared with at least half a dozen others, before quickly moving onward. Dean had no goal in mind but to make himself scarce, to keep his ears pricked and his eyes peeled. He didn't need to read the papers to know what disasters were confounding the world.

The Ministry in upheaval.

The deaths that spurted like inky-black blood across the pages of the _Daily Prophet_.

The missing people, the found people, the victims and the subjugated.

Dean read about what was becoming of the Wizarding world, compared the stories told in the Muggle papers and winced that the Muggles knew so little. They didn't know what was going on. Freak accidents and natural disasters were the accepted explanation. It was horrifying that, had Dean not been afforded the glimpse of his world through scavenged newspapers, he would have been just as ignorant.

Perhaps worst times were when Dean read about his hometown and fretted for the family he'd left behind. He'd called them several times, just to make sure they were alright, and after the first time when his mum had verbally torn him to shreds, they clung to their brief moments of contact. It was all the reassurance Dean had that they were alright.

Or perhaps word of Hogwarts was the worst. Alongside the articles about his hometown that struck him on a personal level, the murmured rumours that speculated in roundabout terms as to what kind of disasters arose at the Ministry, the stories of Hogwarts were the worst. That Snape had taken over as headmaster. That he'd hired new professors for the Defence and Muggle Studies positions and that they conducted the kind of hard-love that wasn't really love at all. That more and more people had dropped out of school, and there was no explanation for their temporary absence but for the fact that they'd left. Dean didn't need to be told. It was apparent to him what was going on, even if the papers didn't say anything. Some of those kids… they all but disappeared when they left Hogwarts.

Dean was scared for his friends. He was terrified for what was happening to them, for what they were going through that the paper and the leaked stories didn't detail. They were under Snape's rule? Snape, the man who had killed Dumbledore, because everyone knew it even if they didn't say so aloud. Dean had confidence in teachers like McGonagall and Flitwick, but even they could only do so much. Dean was scared for…

He was scared for Seamus. For what was happening in his absence. For if he was alright or if something – something _terrible_ had happened. He wanted to see him, just to see him, so badly that the constant ache for it was almost a comforting companion.

In his first weeks on the run, Dean regretted that he'd chosen to leave both Seamus and his family more times than he could count. As he confronted no one, happened across none that threatened him directly, his flight seemed more and more like a baseless precaution. One that Dean was growing increasingly frustrated at instilling at that.

Until he ran into the Snatchers.

Dean hadn't known that was what they were at first. The clutch of wizards and witches had quickly remedied his ignorance on that matter, however, with a brief, introductory monologue before demanding he name himself. Dean, being the ignorant fool that he was, had tentatively told them.

He barely escaped that confrontation. It was a mess – of thrown spells, of barking shouts, of faces twisted into abrupt malice and lunging arms. The feeling of a blow connecting, physical and magical, again and again. Apparating as though his life depended on it – which it likely did – Dean had fled. He fled, and fled, dodging and scrambling from the Snatchers that hounded on his trail until he couldn't run anymore. By the end, closeted in a hostel in a sleepy highway-side town called Grimrock, he'd finally taken his rest.

Two broken ribs. A broken nose. His hand crushed into a pulp and ankle sprained and swollen until he couldn't put any further weight upon it. That was to say nothing of the mottling of bruises that Dean could quite literally feel rising upon his skin. He'd never been beaten up in his life, and the astounding unexpectedness of being subjected to such treatment was almost as bad as the injuries themselves.

Almost, but not quite. After that, Dean had made it his goal to learn as many basic medical spells that he could get his hands on. It was as much experimental as theoretical, for he hadn't much by way of informative research, but Dean tried. He learnt because he had to.

Those spells had come in handy since. Barely a day after first running across the Snatchers, Dean found his name posted on the 'Wanted' list in the _Daily Prophet_ he scavenged from the only magical pub in Grimrock. He couldn't help but stare at the papers in open horror and disbelief at the sight of his name, small and precisely printed. He was a wanted criminal for no other reason than that he had Muggle blood in his veins. It seemed so utterly stupid, so inconceivably ignorant that a single man who was barely even a man for his monstrosities could wreak such havoc. How could Dean be criminalised for something he had no control over?

That was when his game of hide and seek really began.

Since then, Dean had become good at hiding. He'd grown practiced at running and even, in spite of his misgivings and his earlier terror for violent confrontation, he grew proficient at fighting and defending himself. The first time he'd struck a Snatcher with a spell, blasting him fifty paces away to slam to the ground in an unmoving heap, Dean had barely noticed what he'd done. His attention had been thoroughly distracted by the pool of other snatchers that hounded after him.

It was only afterwards, in the privacy of solitude and contemplating his latest confrontation through the grogginess of sleep and healing injuries, that he'd remembered it at all. The thought had been… it had been horrible. Dean hadn't been able to sleep a wink more that night, because what if he'd killed the man? Had he? Had he really…? Could he have done something like that?

But there was no other choice. Had been no other choice. After that, with the weight of injuries new and half healed upon him, Dean had rapidly come to the understanding that he had to harden himself. He _had_ to, because those Snatchers – they kept coming. Because they wouldn't leave him alone. Dean was both grimly satisfied and utterly disgusted that he got as good at dealing offensive magic as he did _Protego_ and Healing Charms. It was a necessary horror that he had to live with because on that list in the _Daily Prophet_ his name remained a constant member.

Dean fought. He ran. He hid and then he ran some more. That became his life.

And amidst all of that, the chaos and the moments of eerie stasis, it was lonely. Dean hadn't expected that his flight to be so isolating. Terrifying, yes, regretful of leaving, definitely, and perhaps even the acceptance of boredom when he had to hunker down undercover to hide from the Snatchers as they passed. But the loneliness?

Dean missed home. He missed his family. He missed his friends from school, and _God_ but he missed Seamus so much that sometimes he couldn't sleep for the longing. He'd always missed Seamus over the summer break; it was strange to go from waking up in the same dormitory with someone to spend the entire day with them to nothing, and had been strange for years. But this was worse. This was so much worse because Dean didn't even know when he would see Seamus again. He wouldn't even if he could.

It was a blessing the day Dean stumbled across the Snatchers with prey already caught in their nets, though not for the distraction that prey provided. Dean could have disappeared in an instant. He could have used that distraction to escape.

He didn't.

There was a certain camaraderie between outlaws and criminals on the run. Or at least there was when it came to escapees from Death Eater and Snatcher clutches. When Dean, trekking between hostels and along the edge of a highway as he was, saw the overhead blast of magic, heard the scream of pain and the bellow of "Run!" – he couldn't help but follow the sound. Sense should have urged him to flee, but he didn't. He'd come across few enough others like him before and each encounter had all been in the midst of frenzied flight, barely long enough to exchange a word.

Dean threw himself towards the sounds of capture in an instant. He raced through the sparse thicket of trees, ducking between trunks and keeping low. He drew his wand instinctively. Climbing a slight incline, slinking behind a tree, Dean peered down onto the scene of a battle.

There were Snatchers. Half a dozen of them and only distinct from their expression and blood-thirsty attacks upon their victims. Before them, ducking, dodging and desperately attempting to fight back, were two wizards and a pair of goblins crouched just behind them. An _Expelliarmus_ stuck a _Protego_ charm in a starburst of red sparks, followed quickly by a fiery beam of _Incendio_ that battered at the shield like a hammer. The man holding the _Protego_ charm staggered backwards, bowing before the weight of the back-to-back attacks from hollering assailants. The second man at the defendant's side looked barely able to maintain his footing, wavering in place and as pale as a ghost. His wand was drawn but the swaying of his upraised arm deemed him incapable of using it. One of the goblins looked to have passed out too, his fellow clutching them with a snarl upon his face shot fiercely towards the Snatchers.

Dean reacted without thinking. Raising his wand, he threw himself down the hill towards the fight. He launched hexes and curses and everything else that rose instinctively to mind. Anything to distract enough that the two wizards would be able to gather themselves enough to fight back. Or escape. Dean didn't think he was a brave person, but he had to pretend he was. He'd had to pretend a lot over the past months. It was the only way he _could_ fight.

As one, the Snatchers spun towards him. Dean only just had the chance to skid to a stop, to drop to the ground, before a wave of curses was flung his way. His face slammed into the leaf litter and it was all he could manage to fling a protective shield over his head, deflecting those that drew to close.

It all happened so fast that Dean hardly knew what happened at all. He felt the wind of spells soaring so close to his head that it clipped his short hair. He glanced up just in time to see the two wizards finally leap onto the offensive and blast half of the Snatchers away into the middle distance. Then they were leaping towards Dean, one pausing to fling an _Accio_ over his shoulder that magically dragged the two goblins in their wake and the other all but launching himself upon Dean.

"Get up, kid, we've got to go!"

Dean barely managed a gasped, "What?" before he felt himself yanked from the scene. Not to his feet but in the magical sense, and the disconcertingly familiar feeling of side-along Apparition crushed him into a disembodied tube.

Seconds later and he was slamming to the ground, back jarring hard on cold floors and breath thrown from his lungs. For a moment it was all he could do to struggle to regain it. Then, blinking the blurriness from his eyes, Dean struggled to prop himself onto his elbows. Dragging his gaze dizzyingly around himself, he struggled in a frantic scramble to absorb his surroundings. If being on the run had taught him anything it was to _always_ know where he was. To know the way out.

They were in a room. A house of sorts by the looks of it, and where the wizard had dumped Dean was in the centre of a small kitchen of wooden cabinets and white-tiled floors. The hum of electronics sounded on the edge of Dean's awareness, which meant… a Muggle house?

Spinning his attention towards the other occupants of the room, Dean eyed them warily where they'd already flowed into motion around him. Or at least warily for a second until he recognised Ted Tonks. "Mr Tonks?"

Ted, crouching beside the second wizard where he'd taken himself to a low, dusty sofa in the sidelong living room, glanced towards him. He frowned. "Do I know you, kid?"

Climbing to his feet, Dean shook his head. "No. I just saw you in the papers. You're… a fugitive, aren't you?"

Ted Tonks was an older man, a little older than Andrew perhaps, with a mess of tangled hair and washed out skin that held the paleness of weariness only emphasised by the heavy bags beneath his eyes. He looked thinner than the picture Dean had seen of him in the _Prophet_ , his jacket hanging loosely from his frame. Clearly life on the run wasn't doing him any more favours than it was Dean.

Slowly, Ted straightened to standing. "You. You're, ah…"

"I'm Dean," Dean said, stepping forwards and holding out a hand. "I'm a friend of Harry Potter's. We went to school together."

Ted nodded, comprehension touching his face and easing the frown he wore. "Oh, right. Dean. Dean Thomas, yes?" He nodded once more, taking Dean's proffered hand and shaking it briefly. "I saw your name in the _Prophet_ too."

"Yeah, apparently I'm a celebrity now," Dean said ruefully.

The man sprawled on the sagging couch laughed with a spluttering cough. "Aren't we all at that?" Pushing himself up a little, he tipped his head in greeting to Dean. "Nice to meet you, Dean. Dirk Cresswell. Muggleborn and proud."

There was much to be said from that simple statement. The way Dirk spoke, despite the audible strain of his, was almost aggressive in his denoting himself. He was perhaps a little younger than Ted, but it was hard to tell for the blood that smeared his face. His dark-haired was as tangled as Ted's was, but he looked in far worse shape.

"Are you injured?" Dean asked, dropping onto his haunches alongside the couch.

"Got me hit once or twice," Dirk grunted, giving up the fight of pushing himself up and slumping back into the couch. "Yeah, them Slicing Hexes are a bitch."

"Can I help?" Dean asked, already extracting his wand.

"Dunno, kid. Can you?"

"I've been trying to learn Healing Charms where I can."

"Needed them a few times yourself, have you?" Ted asked, dropping into a crouch alongside Dean once more.

Dean nodded. "Yeah, I guess you could say that."

"Them Snatchers are right bastards," Dirk ground out. "Swear to fucking –"

"You know healing magic, boy wizard?"

At the sound of the gravelly voice behind him, Dean glanced to the two remaining figures in the room that he'd barely noticed before, distracted as he was by Ted and Dirk. Two goblins, though only one appeared conscious. The one who'd spoken, beady black eyes trained upon Dean, tipped his chin in a way that seemed to jab his overlong nose in Dean's direction. "My colleague is in need of medical support. He would be indebted to you should you offer it."

"I notice you don't say that _you'll_ be indebted, Griphook," Dirk grumbled, pressing a hand firmly to his belly. Dean hoped it wasn't a necessary motion to hold his innards where they should be.

"Of course," the goblin named Griphook replied, as though it were obvious. "I'm no fool enough that I would so commit myself for another's sake. But Gornuk likely won't last the night without aid."

Gornuk was an older goblin, Dean could see, and there was enough distinction between she and Griphook for him to deduce she was female. White dominated her hair instead of the matte silver of Griphooks and wrinkles drew across her brow and tugging at her cheeks. She was clearly very injured too, her face grey and breathing laboured. Dean immediately took himself to her side, falling to his knees and casting a quick diagnostic charm over her. It was only very basic, would barely pick up the superficial wounds, and even that Dean struggled to properly discern when the diagnosis presented itself, but it was enough for him to deduce there was severe damage. He immediately set to work with his attempts at mending.

"Were you training to specialise in Healing magic?" Ted asked, drifting to his side.

Dean shook his head. "No. Like I said, I've just picked things up."

"Good thinking," Dirk said from his couch behind them. "Ted and me, we're both shit at that kind of thing. Could use someone with even rudimentary knowledge."

"Well, I have to admit my knowledge is very rudimentary," Dean mumbled, concentrating on his work. Gornuk was slashed to pieces, and Dean didn't need Dirk's prior words to know that those Snatchers were particularly fond of Slicing Charms. He didn't think… Dean would try, but he didn't think he'd be able to fix all the damage.

He tried, though, and by the time he'd done as much as he could, sweat slicked his brow. Gornuk hadn't yet awoken but Dean hoped it wasn't just his imagination that she seemed to be resting a little easier. Her breaths weren't making any horrible gurgling sounds anymore at least.

Rising, Dean took himself back to Dirk's side. "Do you want me to have a look at you too?"

Dirk managed to prop himself up once more. "Depends. How much juice you got left in you?"

Dean shrugged. "Enough, I guess."

"Then sure thing. Can't say I particularly like having my guts hanging out of my belly."

So Dean fixed him up as well as he could too. By the time he'd finished, dizzy from the exertion and concentration of something that he _really_ wasn't very good at, Dirk could sit upright without wincing.

"You know, son," Dirk said, a tight smile upon his lips. "Reckon we'll keep you around for a little bit longer."

"Keep me around?" Dean asked dubiously, glancing up from where his head was hanging between his knees. Ted sat at his side, patting his shoulder supportively since the moment he'd lowered his wand.

Dirk nodded. "Yeah. Reckon we could use someone to patch us up when shit goes down. Unless you've got somewhere you need to be, of course."

Dean didn't. He didn't have anywhere he needed to be, and though he didn't know of Ted or Dirk but from the papers – he didn't even know of Griphook and Gornuk that far – he couldn't deny that he wanted to be around other people. It felt like a long time since he'd had any company to share that wasn't that of oblivious Muggles.

So that was that. They didn't discuss it further, but Dean accepted that he would become a part of their small group of fugitives. The following morning, when they left what Ted had called the Order's safe house that, "Wasn't so safe anymore," Dean went with them.

After that first night, they tended away from safe houses, and hostels – which, Dean hadn't known, was in fact tentatively dangerous to the Muggles that they came into contact with. Instead they took to camping, an experience that Dean wasn't familiar with but for brief childhood endeavours yet rapidly grew to dislike. There was only so much trekking through the woods and fishing for salmon in nearby streams that he could take. Even the magical tent they shared wasn't quite comfortable enough to make up for their gruelling trials.

Dean learned a lot about his companions over the course of their time together. He learned that Ted Tonks' daughter was having a baby – with Professor Lupin of all people – and that he sorely regretted that he couldn't be beside her as she went through it. That Ted and his wife Andromeda had been tortured for their knowledge of the Order of the Phoenix before being let loose and instantly fleeing underground. Dean was horrified by the offhandedness that Ted recalled his tortures, but deduced from the persisting blankness of his face that detached recollection was all he could manage.

Dean liked Ted. He liked him a lot, the calmly spoken, wistfully regretful man who wanted only what was best for his family yet couldn't stand for the atrocities that were being wrought on the Wizarding world. It was for those atrocities that he'd aligned himself with the Order. Dean did not, however, like Dirk quite as much.

Dirk Cresswell was a ministry worker. He'd been Head of the Goblin Liason Office, which explained Griphook and Gornuk's company. He was Muggleborn, however, which meant that as soon as the ministry had been decisively corrupted by Death Eaters it was either run or face charges that could lead to his expulsion from the Wizarding world if not his execution. Dirk was bitter for the fact, which Dean could only commiserate with, but he seemed almost brutally aggressive when concerning his enemies. Grumbling proclamations and assertions that he would 'beat the crap' out of the next Snatcher who dared to cross his path wasn't all that comforting.

That, and the fact that he seemed nothing if not sceptical of Harry's role as the Chosen One. Dirk seemed to assume that Harry's absence was more in cowardly flight than in an attempt at retaliation or withdrawal to plot and collect himself. Dean's opinion of Dirk solidified more completely barely days after he'd first met them when they retreated to Wales in a little grove to escape from the sweeping hunt of the Snatchers.

Huddling in their makeshift hovel, voices lowered in murmurs to avoid being overheard, they talked quietly. As often arose between them, the topic of Harry Potter and the radio show Potterwatch that Dean hadn't even known existed until he'd joined Ted and Dirk, were primary in discussion. Dean was never so grateful to the host he vaguely recognised as being Lee Jordan – the heads up on current affairs that he provided was like a balm to the wound Dean had only vaguely recognised he'd been afflicted with. Much of the content was morbid, painful for the frequent listing of those dead and hunted, but it was hopeful too.

"I know Harry Potter," Dean was saying as they talked in low voices in their usual campfire discussions. "And I reckon he's the real thing. The Chosen One, or whatever you call it."

"Yeah, there's a lot who'd like to believe he's that, son. Me included." Dirk grumbled as he picked at his dinner. The salmon might have been fresh and almost sweet once, but Dean had eaten far too much of it of late to savour the taste. Dean wasn't sure if it was the flavour or his own words that put the frown on Dirk's face. Maybe something else entirely. "But where is he? Run for it, by the looks of things. You'd think if he knew anything we don't, or had anything special going for him, he'd be out there now, fighting, rallying resistance, instead of hiding. And you know, the Prophet made a pretty good case against him –"

"The _Prophet_?" Ted interrupted sharply. "You deserve to be lied to if you're still actually reading that muck, Dirk."

It bothered Dean when Dirk spoke like that, but at that particular moment he was more than a little distracted by what else had been discussed that evening already. About how some kids at Hogwarts had tried to steal the sword of Gryffindor from Snape's office and been caught for it. Dirk, who had something of an ear for local events, had said that Ginny Weasley was involved and that she had other kids working with her. He said they were cruelly punished.

Dean worried. He worried for Ginny in a way that was more the concern of a not-disliked ex-girlfriend, but he also feared for those that were with her. He didn't know why they would have tried to steal the sword, but in his opinion… for whatever reason, he could see Seamus being a part of something like that. Not for the first time he regretted that he couldn't be with him – either at school or with Seamus fleeing alongside him. But that couldn't have worked. It wouldn't have been possible for the same reason Dean couldn't bring his family along. It didn't make him regret any less, though.

It didn't help matters that Griphook seemed nothing if not indifferent to the plight of Dean's friends when they'd spoken about them. Dean wasn't fond of the goblins. Even less fond of them than Dirk, for he simply didn't know what to make of them. Both Griphook and Gornuk seemed nothing if not reluctant to converse with Dean. Even Dirk, their correspondent before they'd all become fugitives, rarely got a kind word out of them.

Dean had tried to be friendly. He'd tried to speak to them when he'd done his best to continue patching up Gornuk, but there was little else he could do for the elderly goblin. Not only were her wounds deep and of the kind that Dean didn't know how to heal, but her body wasn't up to the task of fighting off the fevers that assaulted her as a result. Camp fire dinners and hard travelling did little for her condition; Dean would have suggested that one of them carry her, being small enough as she was, but apparently even in her weakened state she wouldn't stand for such humiliation.

A whole week after Dean had first met them he'd exchanged little more than a handful of words with either of the two goblins. Ted and Dirk seemed hesitant to answer his questions about them either, though Dean wasn't quite sure why. Was it simply because goblins were secretive creatures?

When Dean asked Ted about them, his reply was short. "Goblins don't much like being talked about, Dean. If they want you to know they'll tell you themselves."

So Dean had asked. Tending to Gornuk once more – though at that stage it really was little more than a feeble attempt to patch up reopened wounds – he glanced briefly to Griphook who, as ever, regarded Gornuk and the healing process with blank, largely uncaring eyes.

"How did you guys end up with Dirk and Ted?"

Gornuk made a snorting sound but didn't reply. For Griphook's part, he didn't even appear to hear Dean at first before slowly raising his black-eyed gaze towards him. "Are you asking me a question?"

Dean shrugged uncomfortably. "I was just curious. I didn't think that goblins had much time for wizards."

"We don't," Gornuk said with a wet cough. She cleared his throat thickly before continuing. "But then, goblins haven't much time for goblins either."

Glancing between Gornuk and Griphook, Dean frowned. "Goblins don't like goblins?"

"I didn't say that," Gornuk said shortly. "Don't put words into my mouth, boy."

"Sorry," Dean found himself saying before he even thought to apologise.

"Are you trying to frighten the child, Gornuk?" Griphook grumbled, leaning back into his seat against a tree trunk. They'd stopped in a clearing for the day, mostly because Gornuk didn't look like she could manage for much longer.

Gornuk uttered a sick-sounding chuckle before coughing once more. "And if I am?"

"You owe him a debt," Griphook said.

"For attempting to heal me?"

"For offering aid when he needn't have."

Gornuk shot a glare in Griphook's direction before turning back to Dean. She regarded him unreadably for a moment before speaking once more. "Why are we travelling with wizards? Well, because we have no other choice. Clearly."

"You left the Ministry?" Dean asked.

"Of course we did," Griphook said, as though such should have been obvious. "As soon as the order passed regarding Wizarding domination of goblins, no upstanding goblin would remain."

"None but the foolish," Gornuk said, nodding sagely. "Dirk is the best of the unfortunate pickings. We had no other choice."

Dean didn't ask them any more questions after that. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear the derision the goblins clearly felt for the Wizarding world. They seemed to carry it even for the wizards who hadn't been corrupted.

Gornuk only grew more and more faded as the days passed, and it was that which drew them to an abandoned safe house months into their travels later. Had it really been months? Dean had lost count. He knew winter had fallen, that Christmas had likely been and gone with little ceremony, but not much else.

Christmas… he'd missed Christmas. For years, every year, Dean had spent it with his family, and only the previous one with Seamus. He missed that. He missed it sorely.

Yet when they came to the safe house, Dean didn't think of the time he missed. He was simply happy to sleep in a real bed again, even if it was lumpy and the sheets stale. Waking to utter darkness and between four solid walls was a feeling he hadn't realised he would miss until it was taken from him. The tent didn't have walls. Not really.

Dean didn't know what had awoken him. He couldn't think as he sat up in bed, shrugging out of the sheets. It was cool in the room, and he could hear Dirk's heavy breathing just short of a snore from alongside the opposite wall. Gornuk's crackling gasps accompanied the sound in a discordant rhythm.

Climbing from the bed, Dean fumbled for his jacket, sliding sockless feet into his shoes. He slipped from the room, passed through the living area of the small cabin that was almost as dark as the bedroom itself, and then to the front door. Peering out the peephole, he unlocked it and stuck his head out beyond.

"Is something wrong?" He asked, and he didn't know why those words in particular chose to pass from his lips. His voice sounded louder for the silence that surrounded them.

Ted, standing on the veranda beyond with Griphook a short, dark, silver-haired figure at his side, glanced towards him. His wand was raised, that much Dean could make out on the feeble pre-dawn glow, but absent of a _Lumos_ charm. A frown touched his brow. "Something's triggered the wards."

Dean immediately felt himself chill, and it wasn't for the brush of icy wind that managed to infiltrate his jacket. Ted and Dirk had been erecting wards around their temporary campsites since Dean had first met them to alert them to approaching assailants. That habit hadn't been abandoned when they camped down in a house instead of a clearing.

Swallowing his rising fear – he'd gotten good at suppressing it these days – Dean edged through the doorway to Ted's side. "What should we do?"

Ted drew his gaze back out to the dark surrounds of the muted trees. Winter still gripped the darkness, and the absence of woodland creatures made more pronounced for it. Any noise that could be heard surely would have been.

"I'll have to go and see," he said finally.

"That may be a foolish idea, Edward," Griphook said. Dean was vaguely surprised that he cared enough to say as much.

"Maybe," Ted said, "but we can't leave it as an unknown." Then, stepping down from the veranda, he started towards the forest's edge.

"Shall I come with you?" Dean called after him.

"No. You stay here, just in case."

Dean didn't think that was a good idea. He didn't like the thought of Ted going off by himself when there was a possibility that someone would be within attacking range. But he waited dutifully alongside Griphook, staring after Ted until he disappeared into the darkness.

All was quiet. The wind barely seemed to rustle the trees. Dean fidgeted in place, scanning the tree line for a hint of movement. Griphook didn't move even slightly.

It seemed to take a long time. Too long.

"Maybe we should go and look for him," Dean said. "Maybe he got lost in the dark?"

"He wouldn't have gotten lost," Griphook replied quietly. "No, I believe that perhaps –"

A _BANG_ and a flash of light silenced him. Dean flinched, startled, his gaze snapping to the brief flood of ruddy light that blazed across the sky above the trees. A cry of pain followed a second later, a distant echo. Dean didn't know how but he _knew_ it came from Ted.

He was running before he realised what he was doing. Only detachedly was Dean aware that Griphook hastened at his side, his concern unexpected given that he'd seemed so utterly careless for everyone around him. But Dean barely heeded the anomaly, diving into the darkness of the trees and drawing his wand as he sprinted in the direction the light had erupted from.

It wasn't far at such a pace. Dean skidded to a stop at the sound of voices ahead, almost stumbling as he caught onto a tree to slow himself. Catching his breath for fear of being heard, he peered ahead. And then he saw them.

There were only two men standing above Ted. They were dark smudges with a hood drawn on one and a hat on the other. Standing in idleness, they didn't even appear to be looking at Ted, let alone making sure he wasn't attempting to escape, because Dean knew. He knew that they weren't just passing wizards. He knew that, whether Snatchers or something else, they were Dark.

"… stupid bastard, I'll say," one of them was saying with a bark of laughter to his words. "Can't be helped, though."

"Think they'll get them?" the other asked. "We'd get quite a hefty price for delivering the goblin."

Dean blinked. What was that? He found himself glancing down to where Griphook stood at his side, regarding the wizards with narrowed eyes. Griphook didn't spare him a glance in return.

"Are we even sure this is the right bloke?" the first man said. He nudged Ted's prone form with his foot. "We didn't even get his name before Harvey blasted his brains out."

Dean gasped. His fingers curled more tightly, almost painfully, into the bark of the tree. His gaze snapped back to Ted and he stared in horror. No. No, surely not. It was wrong because Ted couldn't be –

"'Course he is. You saw the picture. Travelled with the goblins and what's-his-name, from the Ministry."

"Cresswald?"

"Something like that."

"Doesn't mean they're still together. They could have separated by now."

"Well, we'll see when Perkins gets back from the house, then, won't we? Want to make a bet out of it? What do you say, ten sickles?"

"Ten sickles? You call that a bet?"

"Well, what would you make it if you…?"

Dean didn't hear anything after that. The house. They knew about the house, and there was someone else going for it. Perhaps several someones, because if these men were Snatchers Dean knew they usually travelled in packs of larger than three. The more available to smother their victims with spells the easier the smothering.

Dean was spinning on his heel and slipping and sliding and stumbling back towards the house as fast as he could. His mind was so clogged with horrified thoughts – that Ted was dead, that the Snatchers or whoever they were had possibly already arrived at the house, that they were _in danger_ – that he hardly even considered the words the Snatchers had said themselves. About goblins? About some sort of price on their heads?

They didn't make it back to the house. Not in time. Dean slammed to a skidding stop when they almost reached the clearing. When the sound of a magical curse snapped through the air. The cabin was in view, nothing but a dark shape of stone walls and timber roof – until it exploded. Just like that, as though loaded with dynamite, it erupted and burst instantly into a white-yellow bonfire of flame.

Dean's breath caught in his throat. He stared at the burning flame, and for once it wasn't beautiful to see the fire. It was different, so different to the glorious, merry and colourful fireworks that he'd lit with Seamus over the summer. Over the past winter. Of _Seamus'_ fire, because he'd always played with flames. This… this was something else entirely.

He didn't know what to do. Water? Dive in for a rescue? Dirk and Gornuk – they were still in there, weren't they? Were they -?

A pair of figures appeared, rounding the burning building in rapid steps. One of them, a woman in a heavy jacket, was all but stomping as she strode, barking sharply as though in frustration. "… have to look elsewhere. Stupid creature wouldn't have lasted the night anyway, Scarlet, so don't give me flack for burning them to the ground."

"There were two, though," the man, the so-named Scarlet, said as he hastened after her. He looked like a giant puppy trailing after his master. "Two goblins, weren't there?"

A sharp blow to the side of his knee drew Dean's stunned attention towards Griphook at his side. The goblin was pale, though perhaps it was simply in the illumination of the burning cabin. He stared at the pair of Snatchers, eyes narrowed. "You can Apparate, can't you? Dammit, wizard-boy, tell me you can Apparate."

Dean didn't get a chance to reply. A sharp cry, of triumph then a sharply barked order, snapped his gaze towards the Snatchers. They'd seen them. The woman was pointing with a wild swing of her arm, and then wands were raised. Dean didn't have time to think. He grabbed Griphook and in swirling, gut-wrenching flight, Apparated them away in a heartbeat.

It was a horrifying turn of events. For all that Dean had been on the run, he'd never actually seen anyone he knew die. That it was Ted – he'd _liked_ Ted. Dean didn't know what to make of it, how to comprehend it, but he didn't have the time to. For two whole days he and Griphook fled, escaping notice and somehow avoiding the seemingly magnetised pointing of wands from those who chased them. For they were chased, with an utter vengeance. It was as though they'd somehow acquired a pair of targets on their backs that followed them unerringly.

Before morning on the third day, they were found. Dean didn't even see the blow that knocked him down coming. He just felt it, and then the hard crash of earth rising to meet his face as he collapsed to the ground. Then the world blinked out.

* * *

"How did you even…?" Seamus trailed off in a whisper. "You're incredible, Ginny."

Still in a crouch before the door, Ginny flashed him a grin. It was eerie in the feeble light of Neville's muted _Lumos_ charm, but Seamus couldn't help returning it anyway. They were doing it. They were actually doing it.

Their motivation was something of a mystery to Seamus. All he knew was that last week, when Ginny had been called into Snape's office after class to be reprimanded and left with a determination to steal the glass-encased sword, he'd agreed. He, Neville and Parvati, Susan and Hannah and Parvati's sister Padma, and Terry Boot because he went where Padma did, even if he did look like he was about ready to pass out in terror. Luna too as the only sixth year in their group besides Ginny. Seamus didn't know why they were doing it, but when Ginny had posed her suggestion, he hadn't been the only one to jump upon it. This year… barely months into the school term and Seamus knew they had to do _some_ thing.

When it began it was a shock. From the moment they'd arrived in the Great Hall to the sight of Snape behind Dumbledore's podium, it had been different. Silence reigned but for scant whispers that quickly muffled that night. It had been the most subdued sorting, the quietest feast, that Seamus had ever witnessed.

It got worse when Snape stood up to make his welcoming speech. Seamus had never seen anyone appear less welcoming. Without ceremony, he launched into his monotonous drawl. "There will be several changes to the running of this school this year. First and foremost, a revision of curfew times; students will return to their dormitories by eight o'clock every night, regardless of year group."

Seamus swallowed tightly. He, like everyone else in the room, stared and silent at their new headmaster. That… wasn't so bad, but it held a very definite feeling of pre-emption. Snape continued. "Hogsmeade weekends will be reduced to once a term and in the direct accompaniment of an assigned teacher for a predetermined duration. Students will request permission to leave the school grounds for any reason no less than one month in advance and similarly, any applications for the visitation rights of family members or otherwise must pass through myself directly."

A little mew at Seamus' side drew his attention towards Parvati, where she and Lavender both met his gaze wide-eyed. He turned slowly back to Snape as he continued his drone, dark eyes grazing over the students before him. "Until further notice, due to circumstances pertaining to the upheaval currently undergoing at the Ministry, all club activities with the exception of quidditch will be cancelled." He spoke over the nearly silent hiss of whispers that arose without change in intonation. "Further, any students caught in possession of banned items will be afforded detention without warnings. Items other than those directly permitted upon the list of schooling requirements and allowances should similarly be handed to your head of house immediately."

Any whispers had faded into stunned silence. Snape wasn't just changing things; he was enforcing rigidity. He was entirely dominating. Seamus could only stare. It was as though Snape was making a point of turning the school upside down with sharp immediacy.

But he wasn't finished. "Given the recent concerns and suspicions raised by the public and several particular… ex- _students_ of this school," the way he said students was almost a sneer, and Seamus didn't even need to think to know whom he referred to, "have required alterations to be enforced. Should correspondence with such ex-students be made, I would urge you inform your new professors of Defence and Muggle Studies who have been assigned to the school for dual roles."

A slight twist of his head in a sidelong glance was all Snape gave by way of gesture down the staff table, but it was all that was needed. With breaths held, every eye in the Great Hall slid towards the two unfamiliar faces that had gone unnamed yet far from unnoticed until that moment. The both of them were huge, broad and seeming to loom over the professors on either side of them, their dark eyes swept the pool of students like predating sharks would a field of bleeding, floundering fish.

Seamus recognised the man from the train. He swallowed again. _Death Eaters._

"Mister and Madam Carrow will be taking the classes of Defence Against the Dark Arts and Muggle Studies respectively," Snape said with the incessant faintly bored ring to his words, as though he was unaware of the terror at the mere sight of the 'Carrows'. Seamus couldn't look away from the both of them. The memory of the man pointing his wand at Seamus and his friends on the train swum at the forefront of his thoughts. "I'm sure that they will be treated with the utmost respect as due their positions." And that was it.

Amycus and Alecto Carrow. That was their names, Seamus discovered by the end of the first day. He wasn't sure who had discovered it, who had whispered the name first into the terrified ears of their friends, but that was the truth of it. They would have found out anyway, Seamus knew, because by the end of the week, under the table and palmed by wary hands, newspaper clippings of the Carrow's wanted posters taken from the papers from the previous year were seen by every student.

 _Death Eaters._ Seamus had suspected from the moment he saw Alecto Carrow that such was what the man was. Unfortunately, that prior knowledge did nothing to ease his fear. If anything, confirmation only made it worse.

They were brutal professors. The year had started poorly, squeezed by wariness just short of terror, and Seamus had seen from the moment it had started that the other professors were subdued. They were perhaps even as terrified as their students. But the Carrows were something else. They weren't scared; they weren't even simply looming presences. They were so much worse.

Amycus taught Defence, and if Seamus had been wary of the Dark Arts beforehand he was terrified now. Practical classes dominated, whereby Amycus' understanding of teaching was shown to consist of demonstrating a curse or a hex and them choosing an unwitting student to dodge, deflect or suffer from it. Within the first week, three of Seamus' already markedly smaller class had been taken to the Hospital Wing. The rest of them were scarred with something that was distinctly other than a healthy respect for their new professor.

Alecto taught Muggle Studies, and in many ways she was worse. She didn't launch hexes or curses, didn't send students to the Hospital Wing, but she assaulted them nonetheless. It was a mental attack the likes of which felt different yet somehow similar to the twisted persuasions his relatives had attempted to impress upon him. Unexpectedly, regardless of their timetables, every student from every year was required to take the class. It was just one more change unexpectedly wrought upon Hogwarts, and it was perhaps one of the worst.

Alecto Carrow didn't teach. She _compelled_ , and yet there was no magic involved. She had an oddly influential manner of speech, strangely coaxing and encouraging before she would snap a demand. She spoke of the evils of Muggles, of their disrespect and cruelty towards witches and wizards in the past as enacted by those very Muggles, and how their rightful place was beneath the stomped heel of every magical person in existence. She spoke of how, given that they had magic, witches and wizards were superior beings and deserved to be of greater import than Muggles, much as a human would consider themselves above a dog. It simply was – smarter, more, better.

Seamus wanted to object. He did, but there was something in Alecto's gaze as she spoke that forbade interruption. Or at least it did from most. By the end of their second week, as Seamus found himself struggling through the class with the desperate urge to press his hands over his ears – which he wouldn't, because Padma had attempted earlier than week and had her hands charmed to the desk – someone spoke up. Strangely, entirely unexpectedly, it was Neville.

"Muggles aren't beneath us," he said, his voice wavering as he spoke into Alecto's momentary pause. He was curled over his desk as though shrinking from an expected blow, but his gaze was surprisingly steady as he spoke. "They're not deserving of being mistreated. Muggles can be good. They – they _are_ good."

Alecto, in a slow turn away from where she'd been pacing in her usual clipping steps at the head of the class, pinned Neville with a flat, black stare. Seamus was awed that Neville managed not to duck beneath his desk; he did cringe further but only that. "Muggles are… good, did you say, Longbottom?"

Her tone was mild, but in many ways that made her words worse. More threatening. Seamus, two seats away from him, would swear he heard Neville's gulp. "They are. Or at least, they're just as capable of being good as –"

"Do you truly believe them to be kind-hearted? That perhaps, in the centuries since the worst of the fatal witch burnings, they have so changed?" Alecto didn't allow Neville to reply but continued as she shook her head. "If that is so, Longbottom, then why do you believe that for millennia witches and wizards have strived to maintain their secrecy? Why do they struggle to ensure that no Muggle is aware of the existence of magic and those that wield it?"

She cocked her head, large hands slowly drawing before her to clasp together. They looked as though they were strangling one another. No one spoke. "Why, Longbottom, would witches and wizards try so hard if Muggles were _good_ enough to respond without aversion to the realisation of the existence of magic? Do you know what they would do, Longbottom?"

Neville had turned as white as a hospital patient. Even his lips were pale, his eyes wide and seeming to consume his whole face. Seamus didn't think he believed Alecto, but he clearly couldn't find his tongue to reply either.

He didn't need to. Alecto continued without need. "It is because, Longbottom, Muggles fear what they can't control. They will envy, they will lust for the power, and when they realise that it is not and never will be theirs, they will destroy those who possess it. Or at least," a cruel smile touched Alecto's lips, "they could try."

It sounded like a threat, but despite it, Alecto's words clearly resounded in some of Seamus' fellow's ears. He hated to think it, but he knew it was true from the downturned gazes, the tentative exchanges of glances. It was confirmed when, at dinner that night, he overheard Lavender whispered nearly inaudibly in Parvati's ear. "Is all of that… is it really true? Do you think Muggles would really…?"

Seamus wanted to smack her across the head for her foolishness. He wanted to bellow and rage and call her an utter idiot for believing such filth. Seamus knew Muggles, and though he might be ostracised from those in his own family for their opinions of him, there was Dean's family too. His mam, Andrew, Dean's sisters. How could anyone believe such things of Muggles when people like the Thomas' existed?

But he didn't. He didn't, because despite Lavender's words, there was desperate pleading in her tone. She didn't want to believe Alecto's words. She was just scared that they were true.

The year only got worse as the weeks passed. Not just the Carrows but all of it. There was a war raging that no one admitted to openly but every article in the _Daily Prophet_ illustrated to those who could read between the lines. Missing people, dead people, convicted and targeted. Seamus looked at the papers every day simply because he had to know. He _had_ to.

Potterwatch, the radio show that had been started by Lee Jordan and quietly revealed to Gryffindor Tower by his younger sister, made everything both better and worse. The death toll that sounded intermittently through the speakers… Seamus didn't think he was the only one who lost sleep after hearing the names recited in sombre tones. Even worse when one of those names belonged to someone he knew, even distantly. Every night, despite the restrictions placed on the radio that every Gryffindor usurped, they crowded as a house in the seventh year dormitory. Muffling Charms lathered their door, and in a squeezing, frozen mass they all listened. And every night, Seamus was terrified that he would hear one name in particular.

The _Daily Prophet_ had announced Harry, Ron and Hermione as fugitives, alongside numerous others that Seamus recognised as being members of the Order of the Phoenix. He knew because his schoolmates in the know spoke of them with equal parts respect and fear ringing in their tones. Weeks later, Dean's name had been added to the list.

Seamus hadn't been able to breath when he saw it. He was sure he would have passed out at the very breakfast table over the open newspaper had not Parvati appeared at his side moments before Susan and Hannah had and snapped him out of it with a violent shove. Parvati wasn't a violent person but she'd known what he needed. Even so, Seamus hadn't heard a word of his lessons that entire day. That Dean was… that he'd been… In some ways it was a relief to know that he was alive, but in many, many others it was so much worse.

Dean was targeted, and Seamus could do nothing about it.

He wished he could write to him. He wished he could exchange just one letter to be sure that he was alright. Seamus sorely regretted every moment he hadn't spent with Dean that previous summer, relived every second they had and wished that he could go back to just one of those times so he could latch onto Dean's arm and never let him go. He should be with him. Seamus should be at his side and making sure he was alright. He should be…

But he wasn't. Instead he was at school, terrified for the boy he loved, and nearly crumpling in disappointment every time an owl arrived for him at the breakfast table and it wasn't from Dean. He did get letters – from Eoghan, from his parents, unexpectedly, that he still didn't know what to think of – but none of them were from Dean. In some ways it was worse than not receiving any at all.

Despite his regrets, however, Seamus knew it was for the best that he was at Hogwarts. He knew he wasn't an easily compassionate person, didn't think himself good at comforting others and was far from being a leader, but he could stand by the younger students. He nodded his reassurance or placed a firm hand on a shoulder of those who rapidly began to bow beneath their terror of the school, the Carrows, the war and the ambient sense of foreboding that seemed to add lead weights to everyone's shoes and threaten to drag them to the ground.

Neville started it. He started the changes. Seamus could only shake his head at whatever had gotten into him that spurred him towards confidence and determination. Neville was the one who first stood up before the Gryffindor house barely weeks after school had resumed and declared them comrades. That they would stand by one another, help and support each other regardless of what came, and that should any of the younger years need to talk to someone, the seventh years would always have an ear to listen.

Seamus had been stunned at first. He didn't know how to do that, and despite what he'd told Dean what felt so long ago about 'representing their year,' he didn't really know how to do that. Apparently, however, he didn't need to have prior knowledge. A second year was the first to approach him directly, and Seamus didn't even need to say a word to the trembling boy before he was blurting out a shrill plea.

"I don't know how to do this," the kid said, standing beside where Seamus sat at one of the common room desks, staring listlessly at his unwritten essay. Seamus turned towards him, surprised from his distraction, and straightened in his seat.

The boy was tiny. He looked far too small for his robes, and had a head of dark, curly hair that looked to be one step from sprouting into a jolly Afro. There was nothing amused about his expression, however, and his wide, dark eyes stared at Seamus imploringly. "I don't know how to do this," he repeated and held his parchment-laden hands out to Seamus. They trembled slightly.

Seamus glanced down at the parchment, confused, until he saw the juvenile scrawl the kid had already hashed out. Defence homework. Barely a question had been answered and the writing became less and less legible as Seamus drew his gaze down the page.

Then he understood. The kid was scared. He was scared of Amycus, of what would happen if he didn't complete his homework properly. The kid had a right to be terrified, too; part of the Carrow's 'dual duties' was to handle punishments and detentions. They weren't easy, as Seamus had already experienced multiple times in his weeks back at school. His first night of detention – it had been a _whole_ night. Of scrubbing on hands and knees alongside Susan and Hannah as Hannah fought sniffles and Susan ground her teeth in frustration that built into something resembling anger. Seamus didn't know if the Carrows had forgotten they were serving their detention or if they were being deliberately cruel in making it so long.

None of them protested, however. Neville had already done just that in his own attempt at righteousness the previous day and been allotted another two detentions.

Seamus, offering the second year a smile, gestured to the seat beside him. The kid actually sighed with relief as he did, as though even the simple offer of help was soothing. He immediately dropped into the chair and, hand diving into his pocket, extracted a somewhat ragged quill and bottle of ink. "Thanks," he said in a quiet voice. "I… I just can't seem to work out Tickling Charms."

Seamus smiled again. He remembered his second year; he'd actually been quite good at Tickling Charms, if he recalled correctly. "No problem," he said, then proceeded to answer every single one of the kid's homework questions as best he could. It might not have been the best mentoring style, but it would keep the kid out of detention. Besides, the smile he gave Seamus as he thanked him again before scurrying away was worth it.

After that, more kids asked Seamus for help; even some from sixth years, though he felt he couldn't offer all that much to them. Seamus didn't mind helping, and he found he even came to like it. It felt as though they were doing something to fight back against the descending cloud that gradually settled upon them all. Some things they couldn't change, but others they could resist. Or they could try to.

Perhaps the most distinctive and personal change that Seamus noticed in Hogwarts was that Gryffindor was shunned. Not by most of the professors, because no matter how bad the world became some things wouldn't change. But the Carrows dismissed them when they didn't target them. Their grades were torn to shreds, and that was the least of their problems.

Time and time again, Seamus found himself in detention. When points were deducted it was from Gryffindor. When blame was laid, it was upon the nearest Gryffindor student. So many Gryffindors got banned from quidditch for 'bad behaviour' that they couldn't even host a team. Only three houses were set to play that year. It was necessary before the first month of their return to school had passed.

It was for that very reason, Seamus suspected, the compilation of woes against them, that Ginny insisted they retrieve the sword from Snape's slimy hands. The Sword of Gryffindor, Ginny had called it, and she said it was theirs. Theirs by riht.

Seamus couldn't help but agree with her sentiment. This, like supporting his house mates, who somehow still managed to lose house points and gain detentions despite their cohesive efforts, seemed just a little bit like fighting back. The sword was a symbol. It was _their_ symbol, and somehow, the fact that Harry had used it in the past made it all the more special.

Seamus didn't know how Ginny opened the door to Snape's office, but she did. Not with a spell but with a strange device that required no touching but a simple prod at the lock.

"Isn't that from Weasley's Wizard Wheezes?" Neville asked curiously.

Ginny flashed him a smile. "It does come in handy having friends with connections, doesn't it?"

"Or brothers," Luna said absently in her quite voicce. "Did you know they gave me a Dream Catcher for my birthday last year? It's caught seventeen nightmares already."

Seamus didn't know what to make of that, nor its relevance to their situation, but no one questioned Luna's contribution. Following on Ginny's tail as she tentatively pushed Snape's door inward, they crept within.

Snape's office wasn't wreathed in cobwebs. It wasn't cluttered with dusty potions bottles, smothered in tangible shadows or evidenced to host the undead in hidden coffins. It wasn't flooded with snakes either, which Seamus had half expected. It was just… an office. Darkened by night but still visible was the broad expanse of a desk thinly cluttered with quills and books. A cupboard stood alongside another door that Seamus didn't want to contemplate – because to think that perhaps Snape would be sleeping behind it gave him the irrational urge to start laughing hysterically. Shelving dominated one wall, stacked with books and yes, there were the potions bottles, but nothing profoundly outstanding. It was, in all reality, just an office.

Except for the glass casement holding Gryffindor's sword, that was.

Though they were a small group, it felt crowded as they stood just inside the door. Seamus was abruptly very happy that they'd decided to cap their numbers at seven, for even that felt like too many. The breaths of those around him sounded far too loud.

"I think," he whispered as quietly as he could, "we should hurry."

Unanimously nods met his words and as one they slipped across the room. Seamus knew he wasn't the only one to wince at every scuffle of footsteps, at Padma's faint gasp as she kicked her toe on the corner of a chair and caused it to creak or Neville's sharp inhalation as he bumped a hip into the desk.

The glass casement was thick, sturdy, and likely impenetrable but for magical infiltration. Seamus, right behind Ginny as she led the way, saw her pause and adjust her hand on her wand as though uncertain. The glimpse he caught of her face, however, faintly illuminated by Neville's muffled _Lumos_ , was determined.

"Someone should listen for Professor Snape," Luna whispered suddenly and, heeding her own words, slipped across the room on admirably silent feet. Seamus glanced after her, shared another glance with Parvati, and then without comment he followed. Seamus knew he wasn't proficient at delicate charms, and somehow he doubted that simply exploding the casement would be a good idea.

Neville's _Lumos_ barely pervaded the darkness beside the door to Snape's private quarters, so Seamus was rendered almost blind. He stopped at Luna's side, the paleness of her hair all he could make out of her. He didn't speak and blessedly neither did she. He'd always thought Luna a little vague, unaware of her surroundings, but she clearly wasn't so detached as to misunderstand the gravity of their situation.

Seamus could barely hear the whispers across the room they were so faint. He couldn't really see what was being done through the cluster of bodies around the entrapped sword either. With a struggle, Seamus drew his attention from it; that wasn't his job. His job was to keep an ear out for any movement in Snape's rooms. His ears strained with the struggle to catch any hint of sound.

It took long. Far too long, or so it seemed to Seamus, though a feebly rational part of him suspected that it was his nervousness that turned minutes into what felt like hours. His heartbeat was racing as though he'd just run a mile. His fingers tingled with the urge to reach for his wand in nothing but a comforting precaution. Seamus could hear his breath too loud in his ears, every whisper of noise or shuffle of movement from his friends amplified tenfold. When Luna turned slightly and her foot made the faintest scuff on the floor, he wanted to spin towards her and immediately demand her silence. He didn't. With difficulty, and mostly because he stood _right_ outside Snape's door.

As it turned out, Seamus didn't need to see what was happening with the sword to know when his friends got it out. A communal sigh sounded that was so loud he almost hissed for silence once more. But then Parvati was turning towards them and their closed cluster unfurled to reveal Ginny in Neville's pale _Lumos_ light, smiling widely in triumph with the sword balanced between her hands.

Seamus had a second to feel his heart rise in jubilation. Then he heard a sound from beyond the door behind him.

He froze. Seamus hoped, desperately hoped, that he'd imagined it, but he knew he hadn't. He was frozen solid for all of a second before, at a rustle of further sound, then another, he was launching himself away from the door. Luna was a shadow at his side without a word.

Terror must have been apparent on his face, or perhaps the haste of their movement was telling enough. Each one of Seamus' friends saw and each expression morphed into one of mirroring horror. In an instant, with the silence of desperation and the speed of prey turned to flight, they launched themselves from the room. Seamus couldn't even hear the sound of their footsteps for the pounding of his racing heartbeat in his ears, suddenly so deafening he thought that Snape himself must surely have heard it.

They fled from the office. They leaped through the classroom beyond, almost crashing into one another in their haste. Seamus spared a moment to glance behind him as they wove through desks – or in Terry's case vaulted over them – and turned terrified eyes towards the open office door.

Open. They'd left it open. In that moment it didn't even matter.

Seconds later and all consideration for silence was discarded as Seamus and his friends burst through the classroom door and tore down the corridor. Bare feet – Ginny's executive decision – slapped on the stone. Neville's still-raised _Lumos_ bouncing off the walls. They were out, they were terrified, and yet as Seamus pounded after Ginny, the sight of the long, silver sword reflecting the magical light almost overwhelmed his terror. Snape was awake, would know the sword was gone, but they'd escaped. They'd got what they came for. Around a corner and they were leaping as one down the stairwell –

Only to crash to the ground on mass as something barrelled into Seamus, into all of them, and threw them from their feet. Seamus had a heart-stopping moment where he was airborne, arms wheeling and hands grasping for purchase, before he was tumbling head over heels with a jarring smack of his head to the sharp edge of a step.

Cries sounded around him. Of surprise and pain, the stone walls resounded. Somewhere, the clatter of metal pierced through the thumping of bodies, but Seamus couldn't tell from what direction it had come from.

He hurt. Bruises seemed to spring from his shoulder as it struck the ground, from both knees as he tumbled down the steps, to his head again as it smack yet another step. One of the resounding cries might very well have been Seamus' own. He didn't know. He couldn't tell. And just when he stopped rolling, as he crashed into someone that he couldn't see to identify, the reality of what had happened struck him.

They'd been caught.

No one had the time to regain their feet. Gasps of pain and mad scrambles pervaded Seamus' ears as he struggled to straighten himself, but he stopped as soon as he rolled over and caught a glimpse of the figure illuminated by his own _Lumos_ at the head of the stairs. Seamus felt his breath catch in his throat, his fingers freeze in their grasping for purchase on the floor and cease in shrinking from the kicking foot of who he realised was Parvati as she struggled too straighten herself too. Snape loomed high above them and regarded them all with merciless black eyes. No one breathed. Not only Seamus but _no one_. He couldn't hear a sound but his own silently screaming terror as he stared unblinkingly up at Snape. Suddenly, their behaviour seemed very foolish.

 _We stole the sword. How did we think we'd get away with that?_

Snape seemed to hear his thoughts, what every single one of them were likely thinking. "Foolish children. What utter, foolhardy idiocy would possess you to...?" He trailed off with a slow shake of his head that was somehow intimidating. "Did you truly think you would get away with such thievery? What would possibly possess you to attempt it?"

No one answered. No one dared. Snape didn't seem to require an answer, however. With a swish of his wand, he pointed at something behind Seamus that, as it soared over his head, revealed itself to be the Sword of Gryffindor. It could have been Seamus' imagination, but he thought it dulled slightly in its glowing shine as it settled suspended in the air at Snape's side. Almost as though it was disappointed they had failed.

 _We failed. Fuck. And being found out would mean…_

"You have all of you broken more than a dozen school rules in your little endeavour," Snape said in his cold, monotonous voice. "I believe that even the fools that you are could foresee punishment resulting." Turning, he gestured at them with a flick of his wand hand once more. "You will follow me. Now."

Not a one paused to disobey. Seamus didn't think he would have ben able to slow in his terrified following had he been _Imperio-_ ed to do so.

Apparently, for the Carrows, punishment was a twenty-four hour duty. Seamus and his friends followed Snape silently towards what was the newly dubbed the Detention Wing; it had long since become one of the most feared corridors in the school. Whether the Carrows slept there or Snape sent them a silent message as they walked, Seamus didn't know. He didn't ask. None of them breathed a word nor even looked at one another. Seamus didn't think he would be able to raise his chin had he been _Imperio_ -ed to do that, either.

The Carrows waited within a small room with a single doorway leading to another standing adjacent. It was bare but for a row of seats, almost like a Healer's office but with a distinctly morbid cast to it. Though artificially illuminated by an overhead ring of magical orbs, it seemed dark. Plain. Foreboding. Like everything else had become in the school that year.

Snape didn't pause to explain the situation. Maybe his silent message or whatever it had been had done that. The Carrows clearly didn't need an explanation; they barely spared him a glance before, with a nod and a sharp turn on his heel, Snape was leaving the room.

That was when Amycus smiled. Seamus didn't think he'd ever seen something so terrifying. It was Alecto that spoke, however. "My, my, what a surplus of disobedient students we have here tonight."

"Very disobedient," Amycus murmured, nodding his head as his smile widened to a leer. Seamus didn't manage to suppress the shiver that drew cold fingers down his spine. He felt it ripple through his friends on either side of him.

"Surely you've all learned by now what becomes of disobedient students," Alecto said.

"Yes, I definitely recognise them. All of them. They should know."

"Except you." Alecto pointed a finger towards Terry, who seemed to quail in place. "Welcome to detention, boy. How exciting for a novel attendee."

They chuckled to one another before directing them all towards the seats. Seamus didn't question the order. Even had he not been as quailing as Terry appeared, it wasn't like resisting would do him any good. They all folded themselves into their seats, heads bowed and wide eyes peering up at the Carrows. All of them except Ginny, who Alecto jabbed a finger at as though it were her wand about to fire a spell before jerking her thumb in a beckoning gesture over her shoudler.

Seamus had never seen Ginny terrified. Even then, as fearful as she appeared, it wasn't true fear for the determination that set her shoulders and lifted her chin. She was a strong person, Seamus knew, and he'd never respected her more for that moment. Really, Ginny was a good person. Despite his past thoughts, his past resentment, it was something Seamus had always known.

Ginny disappeared into the adjacent room after the Carrows and the door closed behind her. Seamus, head bowed, stared at the door just as he knew his friends did. He stared and he waited. He listened… and he heard nothing. Nothing for a full two minutes. Then the door opened.

When Ginny returned, she was terrified. That as much as anything rocked Seamus on his foundations, almost more than the fact that she stumbled and sunk to her knees as soon as Amycus pushed her into the room. "Go to your seat," was all he said before, jabbing his finger towards Neville just as Alecto had to Ginny, he turned and disappeared back into the dark room. It was like a portal into hell for what it suddenly represented.

Neville slowly rose to his feet, creeping towards Ginny where she'd collapsed with legs sprawled around her. "G… Ginny?" he said tentatively, reaching for her shoulder. As soon as his fingers touched her, however, she flinched and shrunk, turning wide, blank eyes up at Neville as though she didn't see him at all.

Seamus stared. He stared and felt pure terror at that moment. What had happened to make _Ginny Weasley_ like that?

"Longbottom," a barked order rung from the dark room and Neville flinched. He straightened, spared a glance for the rest of them still in their seats, and to Seamus' eyes he looked like he was going to be sick. Then he turned and all but fell into the room before him. The door slammed closed behind him.

Luna was the one who leapt to her feet first. She was beside Ginny and crouching with an arm wrapped around her by the time Seamus and Parvati dropped to their knees on Ginny's other side. "What happened?" Parvati whispered.

Ginny didn't reply. She only shook her head dazedly. This close, Seamus could see the sweat coating her forehead, the dull glaze of her eyes. She barely seemed to realise they were there when they collectively hauled her to her feet and all but dragged her across the room. She didn't speak a word. They'd barely sat her down, patting her frantically into her seat, when Neville appeared.

It was the same again, and in many ways that made it even worse. Something was happening, something terrifying that made Neville look _like that_ , and nearly collapse face-first onto the floor just inside the door. As it was, he sunk into a sprawl just as Ginny had and Seamus found himself on his feet to hasten to his side.

Only for his wide eyed attention to snag upon Amycus as he loomed large and hulking in the door. That finger pointed at Seamus. It gestured into the room. He disappeared.

Seamus didn't have a choice. Not really. He could run, but it wouldn't get him far. What else could he do but shuffle forwards, press desperate fingers against Neville's shoulder in as much of a comfort as a plea for support, before stepping past him? In the Detention Wing, the Carrows held the reins of power.

The door closed behind Seamus and he flinched as it clicked audibly. The room was dimly lit in a different way to the waiting room, and only seemed to make Amycus and Alecto seem bigger for the enhanced swathing of their own shadows.

Alecto was the one who spoke. Almost always Alecto, because she was the speaker of the two of them. "Disobeying school rules again, Finnigan? And this time so drastically."

"I've never disobeyed them before," Seamus found himself saying in a wavering voice, and he wished he could bite his tongue out. Not because it wasn't true – for regarding all of the realistic school rules it was – but because he wished he hadn't provoked the Carrows. For provoking was very much what he had apparently done.

Their smiles grew in synchrony, an identical stretching of thin lips. Then Alecto raised her wand and pointed it at him. "I do believe, dear Amycus, that our punishments have been too lax until now."

"We'll have to remedy that, then," Amycus murmured in his grumbling voice.

"Indeed," Alecto smirked. The she sliced her wand and barked, _"Crucio!_ "

Seamus didn't even see the spell strike him.

It was the most unbelievable pain that he'd ever felt. For the eternity that it lasted, he forgot everything – the detention, the injustice of it, the war that was raging but not publicly admitted. He forgot about his family, about his parents that had been playing on his mind since he'd left King's Cross, and Eoghan who he hadn't heard from in over a week.

He even forgot about Dean.

There was pain everywhere. It wrought havoc though his veins, roaring like a raging fire as and burning him from the inside out. His muscles seized, his fingers curling in spasms. His brain seemed to explode and everything, _everything_ hurt.

When the curse stopped, Seamus was on the floor. He didn't remember getting there but it didn't matter. He could hardly think because though the curse had stopped the pain remained. It sizzled through him in a shadow of the real thing that caused his limbs to twitch and an irrepressible shudder to run down his spine. He was crying, he realised, but he didn't care. He didn't even care that, distantly, through blurred eyes, he could see the Carrows smiling at him.

At that point, everything changed. Seamus never wanted to experience that kind of torture again; he'd barely been able to stagger out of the classroom. He couldn't speak to those that remained for their own punishment. Seamus couldn't even see their faces. He couldn't even speak when words always came so easily to him

 _Everything_ changed at that point, because apparently it had been the point at which the Carrows had decided to take off their kiddy gloves. No more playing nice, if nice had ever even been. At that point, Seamus knew what war was really about. There was no leniencies, no forgiveness, no pandering to children or those who didn't play a pivotal role. War, even to those who'd once thought themselves safe at Hogwarts, struck a fierce blow to everyone it its blast radius.

No one was safe, Seamus realised. No one. For the first time, the first, utterly genuine time, he was very happy that Dean hadn't come to school that year.

* * *

A/N: What a horrible Easter gift. Sorry everyone. But to those who celebrate Easter, I hope you have a wonderful day. And those who don't, enjoy your weekend! I'll see you again in a couple of days :)


	16. Chapter 16 - Seventh Year - Part III

A/N: Just as a WARNING, and one that I probably should have included last chapter, this chapter contains references to torture. I'm sorry if this upsets anyone, so this is a heads up to avoid if you need it.

Also, a DISCLAIMER - this chapter, as with several chapters before, uses quite a few sections of dialogue from canon. I just add this in particular sort of by way of an apology for basically including bits that we all know by heart.

Anyway, enjoy the chapter!

* * *

 **Chapter 16: Seventh Year - Part III**

Shell Cottage was a sanctuary. Settled on the edge of a beach within sight and sound and taste of the sea, it was quiet. Contained. Perfect, even. Dean had barely been there for a day when he decided that, were he to choose one place to stay for the rest of his life, it would be there.

It was a small abode, much like one of the many cabins Dean had briefly passed through in his time in hiding yet more open-plan. Wide windows gazed out at the sea that spread just beyond the front garden, pale walls enhancing the barest hint of sun streaming through the windows in the morning, and the furnishings tidy and refined in simplistically, beautifully functionality. It even smelled nice, the air clean and fresh with a hint of the salty sharpness from the beachside. But more importantly than that, it was safe.

"It's under a Fidelus Charm," Bill Weasly said when Dean asked how he and his wife, Order members that they were, could _possibly_ think to stay in one place for so long. "My Dad's the Secret Keeper."

At Dean's uncomprehending stare, Bill explained. "It basically means that, unless he's the one to reveal the location, this place can't be found. It's safe."

 _Safe_. Safe definitely meant something different to Dean these days.

For the first time in what felt like forever, Dean no longer had to run. He no longer had to hide. If even for only a short time, he was protected, and after what he'd just experienced at Malfoy Manor, what he'd just escaped with the aid of a house elf who had died in the process, Dean felt like he needed that. Dobby… Dobby had died. Days later, and though Dean hadn't known the elf for more than a few minutes he still regretted his death. He felt like he'd seen too much of it of late; Ted, Dirk, Gornuk, Dobby… How many more would he bear witness to rather than simply reading their minimally brutal eulogies in the papers?

Sitting outside in the wan evening light days into his retreat to Shell Cottage, Dean watched as Luna practiced with her new wand. Mr Ollivander had sent it to her that morning, Luna having lost hers when she'd been taken to Malfoy Manor, and she was keen to try it out. Dean couldn't help but feel envious of her. His own wand had been confiscated when he'd been captured by the Snatchers, and after depending upon it so heavily in the past months, after having the confidence that he could – and had – escaped and defended himself against nearly everything for the slim, wooden rod that had become a part of him, he felt like he'd lost an arm I its absence. Worse than that, even, because he couldn't perform a hint of magic. Maybe he could ask Ollivander to make him one too?

But he wouldn't. Not yet, at least, even if Dean longed for the weight of a wand in his hand. He remembered only too clearly how broken Ollivander had been in the manor basement – or dungeons, as they were – and how he'd only shattered further when they'd reached safety. Dean could understand that. What had happened at the manor… Dean had escaped the worst of it, had avoided the Cruciatus Curse that had been afflicted upon Ollivander and Griphook both, but still.

The hexes

The curses.

The spells that _shouldn't be used like that_ , because they weren't _bad_ spells. They simply did bad things in the hands of the wrong people. The very wrong people. Dean had met far too many bad, wrong people of late.

The Death Eaters in the Malfoy residence were just that. They'd had weighted Dean with violent strikes simply because he was an idling target still stung. Or maybe because he was a presumed 'Mudblood' as they called it, he wasn't sure which. Some of the effects still lasted – Dean was still having difficulty walking without a limp – and he doubted the nightmares would leave him anytime soon. Dean had found himself back in the darkness and claustrophobic walls of the manor's pseudo-prison every night since they'd escaped and it took him minutes of gasping and scrambling reaching for awareness after waking to remember that he was elsewhere.

How long had he even been at the manor? Dean didn't know. He didn't know a lot of things anymore – whether they'd win the war, whether there would be a Wizarding world still in existence by the time it all ended, or if Dean would even survive to see that end. It was a little hard to continue hoping when there was no end on the horizon. Dean didn't think himself a pessimistic person, but he was struggling to look on the bright side.

"If you'd like to have a go with my wand, you're more than welcome to try it."

At the sound of Luna's voice, Dean drew himself from his thoughts and his eyes focused back upon her. She was a slight girl, seemingly more a head with a curtain of tangled blonde hair than an actual person. Her wide blue eyes met his own as she turned towards him, a soft, slightly vague smile touched her lips. She was a nice person, Dean had discovered after barely days of really knowing her. Kind-hearted, despite what she'd been put through. Abducted from the Hogwarts Express when returning after the Christmas break? It was horrible. Cruel. Dean still couldn't understand how the Death Eaters could do such a thing as abduct and imprison a sixteen year old student, even logically knowing that such things happened in the Muggle world every day. There was no conscience in people like that.

Shaking his head, Dean struggled to offer a smile in return. He thought he managed. Maybe. "No. Thanks, but I'm alright. You heard what Harry was saying the other day about wands and their owners. I doubt it would really work for me."

Luna had lowered her wand, and as Dean spoke she crossed the garden to the squat, carved wooden bench he sat upon. Plopping down beside him, she set about idly swung her legs as she drew her gaze towards the cottage. "Yes, well, maybe Harry's just not as receptive to possibilities anymore? You could still try. Just try for trying, you know?"

It was the closest Luna ever got to really criticising someone, Dean had noticed, and it wasn't even really a criticism. If anything, it was simply bluntly accurate. Harry had changed in the time he'd been on the run, and Ron and Hermione alongside him. Not only physically, though the leaner, war-torn impression they presented and the slightly haunted look in their eyes was starkly apparent, but emotionally, too. Mentally. They were all harder, quieter, perhaps a little more subdued and a little scarred. Dean couldn't blame them, especially Hermione. He'd heard her screams from the Malfoy Manor basement alongside the rest of them. Though screaming wasn't exactly a foreign sound to Dean anymore, had horribly become almost expected, it was no less heart-wrenching to hear. Dean had heard cries of pain too often, had seen the effects of that inflicted pain, to think nothing of it.

"Maybe," he said, nodding. "But I think Harry's probably right. If anything, I'd say he's just become a little more realistic since I've last seen him. Tells it like it is."

Luna nodded, still gazing at the cottage as though she could see Harry and his friends through the walls. "He's changed."

"Yeah. They all have."

"You too."

Dean drew his gaze towards Luna as she turned back to him. The smile upon her lips forbade considering that her words were in criticism. Still, Dean was curious. "You think so?"

Luna nodded, wisdom beyond her years saddening her smile and dampening its vagueness. It was as though she understood. _Really_ understood. "You've become quieter, Dean. I didn't know you all that well before, only really from the DA meetings, you remember, but I can see that much."

Dean uttered a rueful chuckle. "Yeah, well, I was on my own for quite a while. I guess sometimes I forget to talk to people when, you know…"

"When you don't have to?"

Shrugging, Dean nodded. "Yeah, I guess. Maybe I'm just too stuck in my own head these days." That much Dean would admit. He was constantly thinking, turning over thoughts of what had happened and what he knew had happened but hadn't witnessed. Thinking of his family and that he hadn't been able to contact them even for a brief call for so long that they must be worried sick. About his friends still at Hogwarts and about – about Seamus. A lot about Seamus.

"I think you've grown stronger, too," Luna said, interrupting his thoughts.

Dean shook his head, snorting. "I don't know about that."

But Luna nodded with absolute surety, eyes earnestly wide. "No, you have. When we were in the manor, you were the calm one out of all of us. When Mr Ollivander was upset and Griphook was muttering about us not getting out –"

"I think I probably only seemed calm," Dean said, sparing Luna a feeble smile. "Maybe I really am quieter and that's just what it looks like. Secretly, I was shitting myself." At Luna's little giggle, Dean couldn't help but chuckle as well, if a little morbidly. "If anything, I thought you were the calm one. You always seem very… confident in yourself, Luna."

"Hm," Luna hummed, swinging her legs once more as she dropped her gaze contemplatively to her toes. "Well, I don't know if I was calm exactly, but being confident in yourself isn't so hard, I don't think."

"I think it is," Dean muttered, thinking of all the times in the past months that he'd felt inadequate. All the times he'd hated himself for having to leave his home and his friends behind. Every single time he'd been sure that he wouldn't last a night because the Snatchers would get him. "I think it's really hard. You're kind of incredible for that."

Luna smiled down at her toes. "I don't know about incredible, but thank you. I try."

 _Don't we all_ , Dean thought to himself.

They fell into silence for a moment, Dean simply sitting and thinking and Luna leaning back into the wooden seat, legs still kicking idly as she raised her wand before her eyes. She studied it curiously as though it was a specimen, waving it gently between her fingers. It was a comfortable silence, Dean thought, the sound of waves and a soft breeze their only accompaniment. Comfortably easy companionship the likes like that hadn't even considered he would share with Luna. They were very different people – Dean thought that Luna was likely very different from most people – but that didn't seem to matter. He liked Luna. He liked her a lot.

More than that, he liked what she could tell him. Luna might have been abducted at the end of the Christmas break, but she had been at Hogwarts. Dean couldn't help but all but assault her with questions. The brief glimpses of news, of stories and gossip – he hungered for any word he could overhear. Anything about his friends. Anything and everything about Seamus.

At first, Dean hadn't even considered asking. He'd been so lost in the safety of Shell Cottage that for the entire first day he'd barely spoken a word to anyone. But then, the next morning as they'd all sat together for breakfast, Luna had spoken of the Sword of Gryffindor. She spoke to Griphook as she did, as though commiserating with the goblin about the goblin-forged weapon.

"We tried to get it out," she said, and there wasn't quite apology in her voice but something almost there. She picked at her breakfast eggs, scooping them together and, to Dean's eyes, focusing more upon building them into shapes alongside her toast than eating them. "Snape held it prisoner, so we wanted to free it. I'm sorry that we couldn't."

Why she seemed to refer to the sword as a person 'held prisoner' Dean didn't know. Why she felt the need to apologise to Griphook Dean didn't really know either. He couldn't help but feel the urge to speak, however, because ever since he'd spoken with Ted and Dirk and the goblins of the attempted thievery he'd wondered. Been horrified, too, but wondered especially.

Dean's attention wasn't the only one fastened upon Luna as she continued to pick at her eggs, but Dean was the only one who asked. "Luna, you were one of the people who tried to steal the sword?"

Luna glanced towards him, expression almost a surprised, as though she didn't understand the nature of his question. Then she nodded. "Yes."

"Who… who else?"

At his side, Dean felt more than saw Harry, Ron and Hermione all listening attentively. Even Bill and Fleur had slowly lowered their forks to turn towards Luna. He couldn't blame them. For himself, for his ex-housemates, they'd been so out of touch with the world and Hogwarts that they knew barely a hint of the goings on. Maybe Bill and Fleur could have told him, but Luna had actually been there.

Luna's gaze dropped to her plate, and a strange solemnity touched her expression. It looked unnatural upon her face, as though to regret and sadden was uncharacteristic of her. For a moment Dean didn't think she'd answer him, but after flicking at another piece of egg with her fork she spoke. "Ginny was the one who came up with the idea. Her and Neville wanted to do it the most."

"Neville?" Ron asked, surprised. Dean wanted to tell him to shut up.

"Yes," Luna said, but didn't expand. "We didn't want to have too many people come with us, though, so only Parvati and Padma and Seamus and Terry and Hannah and Susan came too. Just nine of us."

It seemed a bit of a strange mixture of people, but Dean didn't comment on that. He didn't say anything because he couldn't. His mind was caught on what Griphook had said months before, the words that had rung resoundingly in his mind even then. _They were punished, and cruelly_. Dean felt himself struggle to keep the contents of his stomach from rising in his gorge as he dropped his gaze to his plate once more. He'd been scared of a lot of things in the past months, but this was a whole knew kind of fear.

Dean desperately, desperately wanted to flee to Hogwarts. More than anything.

They didn't speak anymore on the subject that breakfast, but when Dean found his voice once more he simply couldn't leave it at that. He sought Luna out as she took herself down to the beach that afternoon and, with a murmured request to join her, sat himself on the dry sand at her side.

They didn't speak for a time, and that muteness was something that Dean had grown comfortable with over the past months. But eventually he did break it. "Luna, I have to ask you – if I was going to ask questions about Hogwarts, would you tell me what you know?"

Luna turned slowly towards him, pale eyebrows rising slightly as though surprised to find him sitting as he was. Then a small smile touched her lips and she nodded. "Yes, of course. If I can."

That was good enough for Dean. Shifting in his seat, knowing that what he was about to ask was cruel but needing to ask anyway, he drew a breath. "When I heard that you'd tried to… free the sword," he didn't know why he used Luna's turn-a-phrase but it just seemed right, "I heard that you were punished. That it was… bad." He closed his eyes briefly. "I'm sorry to ask, but… it's just…"

"They're your friends and you're worried about them?"

Dean turned towards Luna and couldn't help but offer a feeble, grateful smile. It was wrong of him to ask, cruel, but, "Yeah."

Luna nodded slowly. She pursed her lips as though contemplating her answer before speaking. "I'm not sure if you'd like to know, Dean. Hogwarts isn't a very happy place to be anymore. The walls cry if you listen hard enough. Or at least they did when I was there. Maybe it's changed for the better by now?"

Dean doubted that, but he didn't attempt to dissuade Luna from her delusions. Maybe it was a comfort to her. "I know," he said. "I know it might be… that it might be horrible. But if you can…?"

Slowly, Luna nodded once more. "Of course. If you're worried about your friends, then…" Another paused and she seemed to sink into herself slightly her expression grew vague in a different kind of way to how Dean had always seen it in the DA meetings. "Our punishment for trying to free the sword was the first time the Carrows used the Cruciatus Curse on students."

Dean stared.

He stared and –

He stared.

For a long moment, Dean could do only that. For a long moment he thought he'd imagined what she said. Then he thought he'd heard wrong. Then, when Luna blinked at him slowly and he registered the honesty in her large eyes, he knew. Horror welled.

"What?" he managed to choke out. It was barely a word for how strangled it sounded.

A sad smile touched Luna's lips. "Yes. That was the start of it. Neville thinks that was probably the tipping point, and after they did it once it was the go-flag that said they would do it again."

Dean couldn't think straight. His mind was awhirl and he was having difficulty seeing. The Cruciatus Curse was… the torture curse that he'd never seen the effects of before he'd been at Malfoy Manor but had certainly heard more than enough horrifying tales of to be thoroughly terrified of… These Carrow people had cast it on _children_? Not out in the world, not upon to fugitives on the run, but at a school. Upon students. As _punishment._ More than that –

 _Seamus was tortured._ More than anything else, that thought set its teeth into Dean and wouldn't let him go. _Seamus was tortured as_ punishment _and he… he…_

He closed his eyes and closed his lips and tried desperately hard not to vomit.

Dean had come to several realisations over the past months. Being alone unfortunately left him open to contemplation on a deeply introverted level, and even when he'd joined Ted and his group he'd found himself lost in thought on more occasions than he could count. He'd realised that his family was one of the most important things to him in the world, which he'd always known but had never really appreciated until that moment. He realised that June's chattering had never really been all that annoying and that he missed the sound of her quiet yet incessant voice. He wished he'd spent more time playing video games with Keira, or had taken Millie up on her offer to paint their bedroom walls together last summer. He wished he'd called Andrew Dad and that he'd hugged his mum goodbye, because the thought of never doing any of that again became one of the most painful things he could imagine.

Dean realised that he missed his art. He missed drawing and losing himself in the act, the world blotting out around him. He grew to understand that his years at Hogwarts had been the best of his life, and that even the homework hadn't really been as arduous as he'd always deemed it to be. Sometimes, especially the practical work, it was even fun.

Dean realised that he definitely liked football more than quidditch, despite playing on the house team, when he'd trekked past a group of Muggles kicking a ball between them and felt a fierce longing to join them. He came to understand that he'd never quite appreciated what a good cook Andrew was until he was substantiating on crap he brought from the corner store for every meal. That there wasn't anything quite like knowing one had a bed to go home to, a familiar pillow, the safety of a closed door and four familiar walls.

Most prominently, however, Dean realised how much he cared for Seamus. How he had never really thought about it because ever since he'd started at Hogwarts Seamus had simply been there. Always at his side, always chattering even more loudly than June yet somehow in a way that wasn't even a little bit annoying. He was always ready for a laugh and always turned towards Dean first when he had something to say. Dean realised he'd never quite appreciated just how much he'd come to love that Seamus would throw himself at him and wrap him in a hug as though Dean were the best thing in the world and Seamus couldn't let go of him to save himself.

Dean missed the incessant scruff of his hair. He missed the eternal brightness of his eyes, the wide smile that consumed Seamus' entire face and seemed to light up the world around him just for existing. He missed shaking his head when they descended the dormitory steps and Seamus, his clothes a mess, looked like he'd just climbed out of bed and hadn't yet bothered to change. He missed that they always worked together in class and that on many of those occasions Seamus seemed prone to explode thing. Accidentally at first but then intentionally, as though he really did enjoy it. He'd always worn a crazy grin when things caught fire.

And Dean missed kissing him. They hadn't spent nearly enough time doing just that, but Dean missed it so much he ached for it. He missed that Seamus would lock his arms around his waist and draw them together in a different kind of hug to the one they'd always shared, that he'd mumble indecipherable words into Dean's chest because, short as he was, that was about as he could reach. Dean longed for the moments when they'd collapsed onto Seamus' bed, or Dean's bed, and simply lain next to one another, pressed arm to arm and leg to leg as they talked about nothing. Or at least they did until Seamus, the fidget that he was, would clamber on top of him to sprawl across Dean as though it were the most natural thing to do in the world.

And it was. It felt entirely natural and wonderfully.

Dean hadn't realised he'd loved Seamus. He didn't know when it had started, if perhaps it was something that had always been there and simply changed its form over time, but he knew that much. He loved Seamus, possibly more than anyone else in the world, somehow even more than his family, and it seemed like the most terrible thing in the world that he wasn't at his side. And somehow, impossibly even worse than that, that he'd been _tortured…_

Dean didn't realise that it was tears that blurred his eyes until one popped free and dribbled warmly down his cheek. He swiped it away with a hasty hand in an instant before glancing back towards Luna. She was still staring at him, that uncharacteristically solemn cast to her expression, and it was the quiet, almost expectant waiting that urged Dean to ask as he did. "Is he okay? Seamus, was… is he okay?"

Luna blinked her slow blink. For a long moment she didn't say anything, and then she nodded with just a slight dip of her chin. "He's okay. We're all okay. I think after the first time, it almost gets easier."

"They first time?" Dean choked out. Luna only dropped her chin again in something that wasn't quite a nod, but it explanation enough. Dean felt another tear pop free and didn't bother to wipe this one away. "C-can you tell me?"

So Luna did. Over the next few days and in their relative privacy, Luna told Dean about Hogwarts. About the Carrows and their punishments, and about how they seemed to think that somehow the Cruciatus Curse was justified to reprimand students for the kind of bad behaviour that would barely have gotten them a detention in the past. He learned about the changes to Hogwarts, the pervasive feeling of suppression and darkness that seemed to settle upon the very walls, and that not even the professors could do anything about it because what _could_ they do?

Luna talked as much as she could and as much as Dean could hear in one sitting. Sometimes, it was just too hard, and either Dean or Luna would have to fall silent or remove themselves from the conversation. Always to return, though. They always returned and they would always talk, always listen, because there seemed so much to be said. Dean almost regretted that he hadn't asked Luna when they were briefly imprisoned together at Malfoy Manor – though, when he considered it, perhaps it would have been in poor taste in such circumstances.

Dean had his heart ripped apart for more than just the stories of the school, and at times it was painful to listen. He always asked more questions, however, and though what Luna told him never really became easier to hear, Dean got better at struggling to listen to it.

"I can't believe it," he said the morning three days after his arrival as he sat and watched Luna crouching beside one of the flowerbeds. She poked at it intently, poking for Dean didn't know what and knew better than to ask. He'd learnt his quota of imaginary creatures from Luna over the past few days. "You're saying _Neville's_ basically leading the… the…"

"Rebellion?" Luna suggested, glancing towards him.

It sounded almost ridiculous when she said it like that, because that 'rebellion' was clearly all but shredded. Even so, Dean just nodded, lost in his incredulity. "Yeah."

Luna shrugged. "At first, he just seemed to want to avoid all of the horrible that went on at the school. He hates Muggle Studies and was probably the first person that started actually saying he did."

Dean shivered slightly at mention of the class taught by Death Eater Alecto Carrow. Some of the stories that Luna had told him, about what Alecto had said, made him as furious as he was terrified. "Good on him," he grunted.

Luna smiled, a surprisingly wide and distinctly proud smile. "Yes. But then, after that, it became something else. He started to stand up for us." She sighed softly as she twisted one of the flowers at its stem before letting it go to unwind in a twirl. "He was the first one who refused to perform the Cruciatus Curse on another student. Or, well, he was the first one who was told to do it, but he refused."

Dean shook his head. He still couldn't believe that; not only was the Cruciatus Curse being used as punishment but the Carrows were ordering other students to be the ones who cast it. It was… surely such brutality couldn't be stood for. Surely the other professors could have done something. "He's brilliant," Dean found himself saying.

"He is," Luna agreed. "A whole lot of them are, actually, though I think for different reasons. Did you know that Parvati has become our Healer? Or at least she was when I was at school."

Dean found himself smiling slightly at that. It was strange to think of the air-headed, bubbly girl that Seamus had unexpectedly befriended as being anything quite so practical as a Healer. But then, when he thought about it, Dean had never considered himself inclined to studying Healing magic either. It had just sort of happened. A necessity embraced. "No, I didn't know that," he said. His smile faded at the thought that there was even a for a Healer outside of Pomfrey.

"Well, she was getting very good last I saw," Luna said. "And Susan, she's the one that got most of the Hufflepuffs to start standing up for themselves, though I think sometimes she might regret it since they're getting detentions almost as much as the Gryffindors are as a result."

"I can see that of Susan," Dean said, nodding. That was the thing about Luna, and perhaps the thing that he was most appreciative of. She seemed to know without asking that Dean sorely needed to hear of his friends more than anyone else. She offered the stories without comment upon that need.

"Seamus is actually pretty fantastic too, you know," she said, leaning down to one of the flowers to press her nose into its petals. She never plucked them, Dean had noticed, and he didn't question why. He didn't think he needed to. "Different to Neville or Parvati or Susan, but still. I think we need him."

"How come?" Dean asked, even as he fought the muffle pain that speared through him whenever word of Seamus arose.

Luna turned towards him, and a wide smile stretched across her face. "He makes us laugh," she said simply.

A huff of his own aughter that was almost a sob slipped from Dean's lips before he could help himself. This time, his attempt at smile didn't quite make it. "Yeah, I can see him doing that, too."

"Did you know that he set off firecrackers all through the Detention Wing once when almost every sixth and seventh year Ravenclaw was there for detention? It made the papers because someone leaked it."

This time, Dean's laugh was definitely amused. "Yeah. That sounds like Seamus."

Dean never wanted to race to Hogwarts more than when Luna spoke as such. That Seamus was still, despite it all, himself, even if he might have just pretending some of the time, only made Dean want to be with him all the more. Dropping down onto his haunches at Luna's side, he idly began twisting flowers himself as she continued with her affectionate reflections.

That night, Harry, Ron and Hermione seemed on edge. Dean didn't think he was supposed to have noticed, but he'd grown particularly observant of such things in recent months. Sometimes, a sidelong glance or a barely perceivable tension was all the warning he got that someone was going to draw a wand and launch a spell his way.

Dean didn't question it, because he didn't think it was his place. He knew that his three friends had their own agenda, and the obtuse replies to Bill's questions in the past few days told Dean they wouldn't be any more open should he be the one doing the asking. Still, he watched them as Luna chatted with a bemused Griphook – she seemed remarkably open with the goblin, and over the past few days appeared to have regained some of her brightness despite the conversations they'd been having – and Dean had to wonder.

That curiosity was appeased at six o'clock the next morning. Dean never really slept in anymore, hadn't been able to shake his habit of minimal sleep for the past days of relative safety. He heard when Harry and Ron rose to their feet and quietly made about readying themselves. He closed his eyes and pretended and apparently did a good job of it, too, because neither of them seemed to notice anything amiss.

Still, when Dean heard them leave through the front door with an exchange of nearly inaudible whispers, he rose from the sleeping bag Bill and Fleur had leant him and crept into the kitchen. He watched through the darkness of dawn as Harry, Ron, Hermione and unexpectedly Griphook edged into the garden on quiet feet. They disappeared down the path and into the morning without a glance behind them to see Dean watching them go.

He didn't know where they were headed. He was curious, wanted to hasten after them if only to ask if he could help, because Harry _was_ the revolution that would bring change and Dean wanted that. He wanted things to change and, scared as he was, he wanted to be a part of it. But he didn't. If they hadn't asked for his help then he couldn't offer it. Not now.

That was how Fleur found him an hour later as she entered the kitchen. Dean heard her halt in the doorway, silent for a moment, before speaking. "Good morning, Dean. Did you sleep well?"

Dean glanced over his shoulder towards her and offered a smile. "Yeah. Good. Thank you."

"You are very welcome," she said, returning his smile in accompaniment of her slightly stilted accented words. She was a beautiful woman, Dean could acknowledge that, even if it didn't quite effect him as it once had. Beautiful and, unexpectedly, given the stories he'd heard of her from Ginny the past year, rather nice as well.

Dean didn't speak further as he immediately began to help Fleur with readying breakfast. The kettle was boiling when Bill appeared to offer his own assistance, and by the time Luna rose and drifted into the room breakfast was served and steaming alongside a strong pot of tea.

The room seemed quiet and somehow empty for the absence of four other people. Dean was sure he wasn't the only one who felt it, though Luna at least seemed to be making up for the absence of additional bodies. She spoke as brightly as Dean had once known her to and didn't seem concerned in the slightest for their friends' disappearance. In fact, the only time they spoke of it was when Fleur, with a detached glance towards the living room, murmured, "I wonder when zey left."

"At about six o'clock," Dean said absently. He didn't glance Fleur's way to acknowledge her surprised glance towards him, nor Bill's when he paused in his breakfast to spare him his own glance. He only shrugged. "I heard them leave."

And no more was said of the matter.

Dean and Luna found themselves together again that morning as they had most days prior. It was when they were sitting outside in the garden, Luna practicing – though seemingly more revelling in – the use of her wand that Bill approached them and took the seat at Dean's side.

For a moment he didn't speak, though Dean knew there was something wavering on the edge of his tongue. Bill was a kind person, just as his wife was, and handsome in a way that Dean only noticed despite the fading scars that he knew to be acquired the year before when Hogwarts had been invaded. Werewolf claws, apparently. Bill was very different to Ron, less volatile and more easy-going, and it was likely that which allowed him to simply sit and watch Luna practice alongside Dean in comfortable silence for as long as he did.

When he finally spoke, it was in casual words and with no demand for reply. "You know, you and Luna are both more than welcome to stay here for as long as you want. I don't know what your plans were, but don't feel any need to move on or anything. I think after what you've been through, you're more than deserving of a rest."

Dean stared at Bill as the older man watched him in turn. Calm, easy, with no expectation. That was Bill. "Thanks," he said, and he meant it.

"No problem. This is probably one of the safest places you can be right now, though I don't know, if you had family or something else…"

Dean shook his head. Even if his family were of the Wizarding world, he wouldn't go back to them. He couldn't. What he really wanted to do was go to Hogwarts, but Dean knew that he couldn't do that either. Not yet, anyway, being the suspected Muggleborn that he was. He _would_ , if he heard even the barest hint that his presence could be of help, that he could help Seamus in some way, but not yet.

"No. I don't really have any family I can go to," Dean said. "I wouldn't want to, you know…"

"Endanger them?" Bill suggested quietly.

"Yeah," Dean sighed. Then he had a thought. "Bill, I don't suppose you have a phone in this place, do you?"

Bill smiled, somehow a little apologetically. "A telephone? No, sorry. Can't say I do. Did you need to call someone for something?"

Dean shook his head. "It was just a hope. I've found that the, you know, Death Eaters and all that – they don't tend to key into the more Muggle methods of communication. I've called home a couple of times and that's been alright, so I just thought…"

Nodding, Bill appeared contemplative. "That's smart of you."

"Not really," Dean said with a mirthless chuckle. "For a Muggleborn, using a phone is kind of logical."

Bill laughed too, a quiet murmur that matched the seaside dwelling perfectly. "Yeah, my dad always did think that Muggles had their own kind of magical logic. Sorry, though, Dean. I can't help you with that one."

"It's okay," Dean said with a shrug. "It was just a thought."

"Could you write a letter though?"

Another shrug. "I don't know if that would be safe."

"We've got ways to make sure it is," Bill said, drawing Dean's attention from where it had settled on Luna once more. Bill was smiling kindly. "The Order's worked out ways."

Dean didn't know what to say for that, so for a moment he simply stared dumbly. Then he shook his head to clear it. "Really? You could do that?"

Bill shrugged. "Yeah, sure. Why not?"

"That's be… that'd be great," Dean said, a real smile spreading across his face. Even if it was just a letter, that he could tell his family he was alright meant more to him than he could say.

For the rest of the afternoon, Dean found himself sketching letters not just to his mum and Andrew but to all of his sisters too. It took time, because there was so much he wanted to say but so little he could actually write, and Dean found himself spending long minutes staring at the pages of parchment with quill poised until it dripped ink.

By dinnertime, however, he handed the letters over to Bill with the smiling reply that he would make sure they reached them. Dean hadn't been able to express his gratitude enough. It was one small thing that had lowered a surprisingly heavy weight from his shoulders.

Dean took himself out into the garden again that evening. It was nice there, as quiet and calming as it had been his first day. Dean found he'd grown fond of the simple act of sitting and being, an act lacking in the constant need for alertness and flight. Still, even for that peace, he was agitated. Maybe it was simply that he'd been running for too long to truly stop. Or maybe it was just that, knowing that Harry, Ron and Hermione were doing something, that Seamus was at Hogwarts and playing his own part in fighting a rebellion, he felt useless. Dean wanted to _do_ something.

That was where Luna found him as the last of the sun slipped below the horizon. Surprisingly, it was at a run that she descended the cottage veranda's front steps and hastened to his side. Her expression was open yet tight with a strange kind of determination that vanquished her usual vagueness. In her hand, clenched between two fingers, was a gold galleon.

"Dean," she said even before she'd stopped at his side. "I got a message from Neville. Harry's at Hogwarts."

Dean immediately straightened in his seat. "What? How? How do you -?"

Luna raised the galleon indicatively, and then it became clear. Dean carried his own galleon everywhere he went as a memento, a good luck charm, but he'd left it beside his sleeping bag that morning. "The DA coins," Luna confirmed. "And I don't know why he's there, but if he's at Hogwarts, then it has to be for something important. I just know it is."

Dean could only agree, even if he didn't know what Luna was suggesting exactly. "So what are you -?"

"I'm going," she said, and she was nearly bouncing on her feet in her own kind of nervous agitation. "I'm going to go back to Hogwarts, to help out any way I can. I wasn't sure if you'd like to come with me, but I thought I'd just ask –"

Dean was on his feet in an instant. He nodded fervently, because even though he'd told himself _not yet, not yet_ time and time again, this seemed like a sign. And besides, if Luna was going…

"Hell yes," he said. "I'm definitely coming."

Luna smiled.

* * *

With a grunt, Seamus failed once more to push himself up from the floor. It was a struggle, but not for the reasons that past detentions had found him inhibited. Not as it had been at first. It wasn't because his very skin stung for the simple contact with the air, or because muscles protested to the act of moving. It wasn't because every breath tugged at the bruising of his ribs and each gasping breath at those on his face. He knew those aches and pains, knew they were there, but they didn't hurt in quite the same way they once had. Not anymore.

It was a different reason for the struggle this time. This time, the difficulty lay elsewhere because, as Seamus had learned happened after a particularly long bout against the Cruciatus Curse, it was the loss of feeling that was the worst. The inability to flex muscles and curl his fingers. Seamus couldn't really feel his hands – or not enough to prop himself up properly, anyway.

 _It's worse than last time_ , he thought detachedly, fingers twitching on the stone floor, but that was the only thought Seamus could think to conjure at that moment.

The room in the Detention Wing was dark, closed and empty but for himself, second-year Tobias and Amycus. Alecto wasn't in accompaniment, for they had to divide their time between students these days. So many of them were simply 'so bad' and violent punishment took time. Tobias' sobs rung through the room, bouncing off the walls, and they were as terrified as they were pained. Had Amycus hurt him? Had he hurt the kid while Seamus had been out of his mind?

That, Seamus wouldn't stand for.

The Cruciatus Curse never got any easier. Not really. If anything, dread for what was to come only made it worse, because every time it happened the agony never became any less. Never. The aftermath was different – skin stung but didn't sting, bruises ached but weren't aching, breaths were a trial but familiarly trialling – and that physical echo of pain markedly less. But if anything, Seamus thought his fear for what he knew was to come, of the absence of feeling afterwards that had grown increasingly pervasive after each bout, made it even worse.

But he wouldn't shy from it. Seamus would never, _ever_ stop fighting, _ever_ stop standing tall for the younger kids, _ever_ stoop to performing the torture curse on some of the younger kids as some of his fellows had in terror for their own safety. Terry Boot had been one of those fellows, and though eventually Seamus and his friends – and Terry's ex-girlfriend Padma, though even more eventually – had forgiven him for his fear, Terry hadn't. For some people there was no coming back from the knowledge that they could inflict torture in their desperation

It was hard to forgive someone for attempting to _Crucio_ another person to save their own skin, but Seamus could understand it in a twisted kind of way. He could understand it very well as he struggled to push himself onto his hands and knees and instead collapsed back down onto his face.

"Don't move, Finnigan," Amycus all but growled above him, "or I'll just knock you down again. I'd have though you'd had enough of Bruising Hexes."

Seamus wanted to curse the man. He wanted to spit and snarl at him, to stab him with a glare and to show the Death Eater that he wasn't scared of him even if he was, that he'd keep fighting him even if he couldn't stand, and that he'd always step into the line of fire for the second year kid that trembled alongside him even if he could hardly breathe.

But he couldn't. Seamus couldn't move, even when Tobias' sobs grew even more blubbering. Peering blearily upwards, he couldn't do anything when, as Amycus raised his gaze of Seamus' shoulder, the kid behind him started crying in earnest.

It had gotten worse. Everything had gotten so much worse. There was no mercy in the treatment of the students, and for the Gryffindors least of all. Since Christmas, since they'd sincerely started fighting back because they _had_ to or they wouldn't survive to see the end of the year, it had only imploded upon itself more completely.

The professors couldn't do anything but comfort them when it happened. Pomfrey patched them up as much as Parvati and Hannah and Michael Corner did in the safety of their houses common rooms. Seamus could tell that McGonagall was furious and furiously horrified, that she desperately wanted to do something, and her concern showed itself in the moments when he attended her class. She spent those lessons not teaching but talking to Seamus and his fellow students, comforting them, healing where she could and answering questions on the war. For that was what they needed; Seamus had grown to realise, of himself and his classmates, that hope on the warfront was often the best balm for what afflicted them.

Hogwarts was a mess. A dark, tangled, foreboding mess that didn't seem in the midst of being alleviated in the near future. Snape was an equally dark cloud that presided over them, rarely speaking and appearing only in a flurry of robes like a predatory bird sweeping amongst them to invoke fear in those who, for whatever reason, may have calmed even slightly. Not that many did. The Carrows, in spite of what McGonagall and Sprout and Flitwick and the rest of the professors attempted, where a battering ram that reigned pain and terror wherever they went. They weren't going anywhere either. It wasn't like the Ministry would exclude them.

The war had exploded. Terror and chaos reigned, and Seamus wasn't altogether sure how much better it would be to be _out there_ than at Hogwarts. At least at Hogwarts he had an enemy that he knew and could see. He knew that if he was to be punished it wouldn't be to the point of execution. He had pure blood running through his veins after all, despite the fact that it was 'dirtied' by his father's.

Dirtied. That was what Alecto had called it. She'd spoken as such before the entire class, professing everything wrong with Seamus' Muggle-related side just as she had to everyone else in a similar situation before him. At that point Seamus didn't care. It didn't bother him anymore. He'd long ago learned how to ignore Alecto's ravings. Or when he could, at least. Sometimes she was… more insistent.

Seamus knew his father wasn't dirty. Not in that way. He knew it despite the preaching of the Carrows, of the _Daily Prophet_ that fell only further and further under disrepair with every publication. For all that his parents had done, he knew that much, and he told his parents in obtuse terms – for to be openly disbelieving in a letter that could be potentially intercepted was dangerous – that he didn't believe it. He knew his mam and dad had gone into hiding. They'd had to. They'd said just that much in similarly roundabout terms just before they'd disappeared. Seamus hadn't heard from them for weeks.

He didn't know how to feel about that. There was so much confusion when it came to his family that he didn't know what to think at all anymore. At least for most of them, anyway. For Eoghan… Seamus could still be only relieved that Eoghan was safe, that working in the Portkey Office in the Department of Magical Transportation was largely untouched by the war. Or at least less touched than the rest of the Ministry. Seamus still received letters from Eoghan.

Every day had become a fight, but Seamus forced himself to battle through it. He struggled to force a smile onto his face, to joke with the younger years as he very pointedly gave them any answers to their homework that he could glean, and he was rewarded by their ragged smiles and even a slight easing of their tension. He comforted those that dragged themselves back from their detention with wounds and broken spirits, exhausted after a night of labour or of fighting the urge to cave before the demands of the Carrows. Some of them didn't manage to withstand the fight.

Neville had been one that had. Only recently he'd been forced to make the ultimate move. As their designated leader – Seamus didn't even question it anymore, because it just seemed so obvious that it would be Neville after everything they'd been through – he'd fought the hardest. And, as a result, his family had been made to pay for it. When the Death Eaters had gone after his Gran, it was the first time Seamus had seen Neville waver. Only for that wavering to harden when he'd received a letter days after her disappearance saying she was safe, had all but pulverised those who went for her, and that she was in hiding.

After that, Neville disappeared. Or at least to the eyes of Snape and the Carrows he did. Neville had gotten very good at keeping the Room of Requirement, the base that they'd all unanimously decided upon, from their sight. It was now a safe haven for all those injured and in need of temporary escape from the threats loaded atop of Hogwarts and infiltrating its halls. Some of them, like Neville, rarely ventured out. It simply wasn't safe to.

Seamus was one of those who did. He had to, because as far as the Carrows and the rest of the Death Eaters – the rest of _Voldemort's_ men, a distinction that the ex-DA members and all those included had agreed upon to stoutly deny their fear – he was still the son of a pureblood. His family still cared enough about him, apparently, that he could be used as leverage. And that meant that Seamus couldn't disappear. In many ways, he kind of wished he'd been disowned.

But in others, it was a good thing. Someone needed to stand up for the younger kids that were at the mercy of the Carrow's wrath. Someone had to take the brunt of the damage in the detention, because little second year kids like Tobias couldn't handle that kind of punishment. Seamus knew he wasn't particularly brave and he certainly wasn't a leader, but he could do that much.

The Cruciatus Curse hurt. In the moment, it hurt so badly that Seamus had longed for death throughout it more times than he could count. But it would hurt just as badly, would leave him more torn inside and hurt _afterwards_ as it no longer physically did, if he let his underclassmen take the punishments alone.

As Seamus curled on the floor of the Detention Wing, listening to Tobias' sobs and barely even hearing what Amycus said to him, he clung to that. And when it finally ended, when Amycus finally stopped his taunting and stepped to Seamus' side, grabbing the collar of his shirt and bodily dragging him from the room to dump him like a sack of garbage into the hallway, it was all Seamus could do to maintain his consciousness. _Fuck_ , but he felt so wrong. Wrong, because it didn't hurt on a physical level but his body wailed for the damage it had contracted. The Cruciatus Curse wrought havoc on his nerves, and Seamus knew he'd likely still be unable to properly feel his fingers even several hours later.

The door to the Detention Room slammed shut. The echo carried down the corridor, interrupted only by Seamus' hitching, broken gasps. Until Tobias spoke, anyway.

"Seamus?" his trembling voice whispered at Seamus' side. It was close, close enough that he guessed the kid was crouched beside him. When Seamus struggled to roll over it was to see it was so through the blurring lens that was his eyes.

Tobias' eyes were wide and staring, his chin trembling as much as his voice when he visibly um-ed and ah-ed about what he should do to help. His fingers clutched at the air before him as though attempting to grasp it, or maybe it was just in a feeble gesture to offer a hand of support. Every kid knew nowadays: don't touch a Crucio-ed victim without their say so. Sometimes the press of fingers on abused nerve endings was the worst feeling in the world. Even worse, in Seamus' opinion, when he couldn't feel that touch at all.

Damaged nerves. They were kind of a bitch.

With a struggle, Seamus forced out a smile. He felt his lips crack but he didn't care. Just one more bodily injury that he didn't really feel anymore. "Hey, Toby. Think we might have to work out a better way to get your homework done, like. Make sure we don't get sprung again, yeah?"

Tobias sobbed as he nodded. "Yeah. I think so." He sniffled. "I'm sorry, Seamus."

"Don't… don't sweat it," Seamus said, and with a Herculean heave managed to push himself onto his elbows. Fucking Amycus. At least sometimes Alecto had the decency to call for a fellow student to help those punished make it back to their common room. Amycus didn't even do that. "Did he hurt you badly?"

Tobias shook his head, though Seamus knew he was lying. He could see the blossoming bruise of the kid's cheek, perceivable even for the darkness of his skin. But he was forbidding of admitting his own injuries. A strong kid, Seamus sorely liked him, and not only just for the fact that he was the first one to ever approach Seamus to ask for help so many months ago and to practically hero-worship him thereafter. In some ways, not just for how he looked, he reminded Seamus of Dean.

But Dean was… no, Seamus wasn't supposed to think about Dean. He couldn't, because every time he did he thought he might have a heart attack. Just as he had a week before – a week? Or had it been longer? – when Dean's name had been taken from the Wanted Fugitives list in the _Prophet._ Seamus had been inconsolable in his distress until Susan, the eternally rational and unwavering Susan, had forced him to sit down and breathe.

"Calm down, Seamus," she ordered, speaking lowly as she glanced around the Great Hall to be sure no one noticed his distress. "He's alright."

"How – do you -?" Seamus fought to speak between gasps. It had never been more difficult in his life. He'd never felt such sheer, mind-numbing panic before. "How do you – know that?"

"Because," Susan said matter-of-factly, "if he was there would have been something about it. In the papers or," she paused to lower her voice, "or on Potterwatch. You know they catch wind of any deaths on our side. We'd know about it. I promise."

Seamus clung to that, just as he'd clung to the radio every night since with the desperate hope that he wouldn't hear Dean's name voiced in Lee Jordan's regretful tone. He hadn't yet. Seamus had that much to hold on to.

But he couldn't think of Dean. Not now, not since, not when to do so would worry him once more. Not when he needed to be strong for the second year that crouched beside him and gazed at him with distress that had long ago passed the border into fear. Poor kid. It must be pretty horrible to feel so useless before someone who needed help. Seamus understood that feeling only too well.

"Hey, Toby," Seamus said, making another effort to push himself from his elbows to his hands. "Think you can help me to the Room of Requirement, like?"

Tobias nodded instantly, so fervently that for a moment Seamus worried that his head would rock right off his shoulders. Then, tentatively, because he knew about the touching rule just as every kid did, he reached for Seamus and gingerly drew an arm around Seamus' shoulders.

It didn't hurt. Not really, or at least not in the way that hurt was supposed to feel. It was the wrongness more than anything that hurt. A touching hand shouldn't feel like that. Seamus grit his teeth through it, told himself it would fade. That touch would stop being so wrong in an hour or two and then it would only be inflicted pain that carried that sense of wrongness. That a touching hand wouldn't be _bad_ when someone, anyone, had healed him up.

Once, Seamus wouldn't have been able to do that. Once, he would have struggled to step forwards in the face of the Carrows' threat, even when the safety of his underclassmen and fellow housemates was on the line. Not anymore, though. Practice… it made something of a difference.

With more effort than it should have taken him to climb to his feet, Seamus and Tobias' combined forces finally dragged them to standing. Seamus was breathing heavily, leaning just as heavily on Tobias' shoulder, and he felt bad for that. Seamus himself had never been tall, but Tobias was a toothpick of a kid. Not that he let his skinniness impede him, however. Without complaint, Tobias started along the corridor with single-minded determination.

Seamus thought he might have lost consciousness at some point, perhaps a few times, despite the fact that he kept walking. It had been a brutal detention that time, and mostly because Seamus had already had one just the previous day. Two days in a row… that wasn't good. He could go to the Hospital Wing, but Pomfrey had to report the healing of any injuries she conducted and had been called out on 'erasing the effects of the students' punishment' on more than one occasion. More than a dozen, for that matter. Seamus didn't want to push his luck.

Staggering along what Seamus blearily registered as being the seventh floor, he blinked blurred eyes at Tobias. "Toby, you don't know where Parvati is, do you?"

"No," Toby replied shortly, perhaps a little worriedly. "I'll go and look for her, though. I will. Or Hannah. Or Michael."

The way he said it told Seamus he'd already asked just that question. "How many times have you told me that already?"

"Only twice."

"Oh. Right. Well thanks, like."

"I'll go and look for them as soon as I drop you off at the Room."

They didn't speak anymore after that, as much because Tobias was panting under the weight of dragging Seamus after him as because Seamus nearly lost his head once more. Seamus didn't even see the door to the Room appear before it was suddenly there and they were tumbling through.

Familiar openness. Curtained off sections of the room that offered a degree of privacy to those that slept in the Room. Hammocks interspersed throughout and the Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw banners draping down the walls. It was all familiar, as familiar as Seamus had ever found the Room. Neville had gotten very good at producing just what they needed. When he was around, anyway. He'd been taking trips through the picture frame at the far end of the room to what they'd discovered linked to the Hog's Head in Hogsmeade and old man Aberforth Dumbledore that owned it. Who would have guessed that Dumbledore had a brother?

The murmur of voices didn't halt entirely when Seamus and Tobias stumbled inside – such a sight as they made wasn't exactly unfamiliar – but hisses of worry erupted and several people jumped to their feet. In moments, a crowd of half a dozen concerned figures, nearly half of those currently in the room, surrounded him. Seamus swung his fading attentiveness to Susan as she appeared out of nowhere. She wrapped her arm around his shoulder, all but lifting him from his feet. She was a lot stronger than she looked, and not just physically.

"Shit, Seamus," she muttered. "Don't tell me you were baiting him."

"I wasn't," Seamus mumbled. He heard himself slur. Merlin, but it was hard to stay awake. "I didn't –"

"He didn't," Tobias said, his voice subdued at Seamus' other side. "Amycus was just in a bad mood, I think."

"Is Amycus ever not in a bad mood?" someone asked from behind Seamus. He didn't know who and couldn't find enough care to check.

No one replied to that, and Seamus let himself be hauled to one of the curtained-off sections of the room that were by and large reserved for just such people in Seamus' situation. He couldn't help but sag when Susan, with as much gentleness as she could manage, lowered him onto a bed of heaped blankets and pillows that was surprisingly soft for its makeshift fabrication.

"I don't know where Hannah is at the moment," she was saying, muttering seemingly more to herself than to anyone in particular. "It's too early in the afternoon for her to be definitely at the common room."

"It's okay, Toby was going to –"

"I was going to go and look for Parvati," Tobias finished for him. Seamus didn't bother continuing or voicing his agreement. He was grateful to be spoken for. The pressure of the blankets as against his skin was sickening because he couldn't _feel_ it, and that numbness was a sharp contrast to the spark a headache in his temple that whined for attention. It didn't feel good, felt bad, wrong, but it was enough to simply be lying down. He very much simply wanted to close his eyes, if only for a moment.

Susan nodded towards Tobias in acknowledgement. "Yeah, that's a good idea. If you go and get her, I'll keep an eye on Seamus."

Tobias nodded quickly and in a second had disappeared from Seamus' narrowed, blurry sight. Or maybe it was simply that his vision was darkening a little. He blinked up at the high ceiling, the cornices intricate and familiar from having been in just such a sprawled situation numerous times before. Seamus felt more than saw Susan still at his side.

"Hey, Susan?"

"Just sleep for a bit, Seamus," she said, likely assuming what he was about to say even had Seamus not known himself. "Wake up when you're feeling better."

Seamus sighed and obligingly closed his eyes. He tried to move as little as possible, for even if he couldn't feel the hurts, he knew his body was damaged. The detention kids – they knew the limits of an unfeelingly damaged body. They knew them well. "Thanks."

"You too," Susan said, and Seamus didn't get a chance to ask what she meant by that before he drifted into the blankness sleep. He probably didn't need to know. Though he couldn't think what it was at that moment, Seamus recalled saying just those words to his fellow students before.

When he woke, it was to find the Room apparently slightly more crowded for the distant muffle of voices beyond the half-open curtains and Parvati at his side where Susan had been. Her wand was out and she muttered over him, a frown of concentration crinkling her brow. That frown had become a familiar sight on Parvati's face, one that Seamus would never have expected to see from the superficial and light-hearted girl in the past. He didn't think he'd heard her giggle all year.

Shifting, Seamus was overwhelmingly relieve to feel. To simply feel – the weight of blankets, of Parvati's hand rested on his wrist, of his toes and even his fingers. The tingle of abused nerves had waned – expectedly, for Seamus knew that the neuronal effects of the Cruciatus Curse were those that their designated healers tackled first – and his bone deep heaviness had lessened some. Substantially, even. In place of numbness, of heaviness, many of the dull aches of bruises blossomed in squeezing aches and the sting of a deep wound he'd only been distantly aware from seeing it strike him niggled at his belly. It didn't hurt nearly as much as Seamus knew it should have, but it was something. Something was infinitely better than nothing.

Watching as Parvati magically stitched the last of that very wound closed like a tugged zipper, he drew his gaze to her face. "Thanks."

Parvati glanced towards him and offered a smile. She looked tired. "That's okay. You were pretty much beaten to a pulp."

"Your compliments are so sincere, like," Seamus said, pushing himself up to sitting and ignoring the return of a frown Parvati adopted as he did so. "I appreciate it."

He felt better. Much better, actually. Yes, the bruises were still there, but he could move, could sit up, could rub his hands together and feel his own fingers. Tentative motions were all he tried at first, then with more confidence. Seamus felt a satisfied smile touch spread as Parvati watched him test himself. "You're definitely getting better at all this stuff."

"I've had a lot of practice," she said quietly. She didn't sound pleased for the fact. A moment of silent contemplation and then she was shuffling forwards once more. "Here, I'll just fix up your bruises a bit."

Seamus waved her away. "I'm fine."

"No you're not."

"They're not that bad," Seamus insisted, for really, next to everything else, they weren't. If anything, Seamus sort of appreciated the hurts. "Besides, you look right buggered, like. Take it easy. We might need you to help someone else out in a bit."

"They're not that bad?" Parvati said, raising a sceptical eyebrow. She'd never been so sarcastically sceptical in the past. More than the absence of her giggling had changed that year. "Clearly you haven't seen your face, then."

Seamus hadn't, but he could feel it. It felt hot and distantly sore, his cheeks swollen and when he offered a small smile to Parvati he noticed it did twinge to do so. Just a little bit. _Good,_ was all he could think of it. _That's good._ "Maybe not. But they're not so bad to handle, like. You pretty much fixed everything else up, Parvati. Thanks."

Parvati didn't look satisfied but before she could say anything a voice interrupted the muted buzz of conversation from beyond the half-closed privacy curtain. "Look who it is! Didn't I tell you?"

There was a moment of pause in which Seamus turned curiously in the direction of Neville's words, Parvati turning alongside him. Then the whole room seemed to explode.

"Harry!"

"It's Potter, it's Potter!"

"Ron!"

"Hermione!"

Seamus was on his feet in an instant and scrambling through the privacy curtains and any lingering drowsiness or aches disregarded. Parvati, her matronly demeanour discarded in the sudden excitement, leapt at his side. Bursting into the open, wide-eyed, Seamus just caught a glimpse of everyone in the Room crowded around the picture frame of Arianna Dumbledore before Neville's voice cut through the clamour.

"Ok, ok, calm down!" He called, raising both hands in placation to quiet everyone. Seamus hastened across the room, almost jumping in excitement because _Merlin_ , Harry? Harry and Ron and Hermione? They were back? No one wanted to say just what that meant, but everyone knew. It meant that the revolution was at hand. Seamus and his friends, all of those who dared to rebel against the Carrows and the enforcement Snape placed upon the school, had been holding out for a change, for a symbol, for something to make the first move in their favour.

Harry Potter, the Chosen One, the Boy Who Lived – he was that symbol. As Seamus stared through the crowd of fellow students towards the admittedly dirty and threadbare trio, it wasn't even the boy that he'd grown up alongside that he saw. Harry was something else.

"Where are we?" Seamus heard him say as he drew admittedly surprised eyes around himself.

Neville grinned, satisfaction evident. "The Room of Requirement," he said proudly, before launching into a rapid-fire explanation of how he'd come about it, how he'd shaped it, how, first and foremost, it was a protected space.

"And the Carrows can't get in?" Harry asked, raking his gaze over the heads of those around them.

Seamus, who had wormed found his way through the crowd, beamed at Harry as he answered for them all. He might not be as experienced in making it as Neville was but he vaguely knew the logistics. "No. It's a proper hideout, like, as long as one of us always stays in here. They can't get at us and the door won't open." He glanced towards Neville, and though it still twinged him to do so, he felt his smile widen further. Everyone was proud of Neville, and whatever derision they might have once held for the stuttering nervous boy had long ago faded into warranted respect. "It's all down to Neville. He really gets this room, like. You've got to ask it for exactly what you need – like, "I don't want any Carrow supporters to be able to get in" – and it'll do it for you. You've just got to make sure you close the loopholes. Neville's the man!"

He was babbling a little, Seamus registered, but he didn't care. He was babbling and bubbling with euphoric excitement that all but erased the afternoon detention, but Seamus didn't care at all. Neville certainly deserved the praise.

The grin Neville returned to him was just as proud as it had been before, if a little embarrassed. "It's not quite as straightforward, really. I'd been in here about a day and a half and getting really hungry, and wishing I could get something to eat. That's when the passage to the Hog's Head opened up." He shrugged, as though it had really been purely by chance rather than any contribution of Neville's inquisitiveness – and, Seamus suspected, his ingenuity – that he'd found it. "I went through it and met Aberforth. He's been providing us with food, because for some reason that's the one thing the room doesn't really do."

Neville and the new arrivals – Harry, it was bloody _Harry_ – fell into a continually rapid exchange. Exclamations of its founding bounced between them, of its expanding, of how the Room had morphed to suit their needs as the numbers of those hidden within it grew. Seamus watched and listened with rapt attention. It seemed almost impossible that this could really be happening.

A symbol. A change. It was what they'd all been waiting for and it was _exciting._

Until talk swung towards Harry, Ron and Hermione themselves and what they'd done. About how they'd broken out of Gringotts, and Seamus could only at them with renewed respect. They'd broken into Gringotts? He couldn't believe they'd actually done it. And a dragon? Every single person in the Room had heard the speculations, that Harry Potter was looking for something. With tales of infiltrations arising, Seamus couldn't help but ask.

"What were you after?" he said, speaking over the applause and admiring chatter as the Gringotts infiltration was acknowledged by attentive listeners.

Unfortunately, whatever Seamus had said seemed to have to opposite effect of inducing a hasty and constructive response. Or at least that's what it looked like. Seamus was watching Harry's face, awaiting a response, so he saw it happen. For a moment his expression blanked, his eyes turning glassy behind his spectacles. Then an expression of gradual horror grew in its place. Seamus exchanged a glance with Parvati at his side, Susan who'd appeared just beyond her, before turning back to Harry.

That was when Harry all but collapsed. Ron, at his side, only just caught him before he sagged to his knees.

Cries of fear and concern rose around them and Seamus noticed Parvati reach a hand forward as though she wanted to help, her Healing urge grown instinctive. A second later, however, before Seamus could even think about really worrying, Harry seemed to catch himself, shaking his head as though getting his bearings.

"Are you alright, Harry?" Neville asked tentatively at his side. "Want to sit down? I expect you're tired, aren't -?"

"No," Harry interrupted shortly, and any light-heartedness and admiration for the Room's existence that had been in evidence before was abruptly vanquished. He glanced briefly towards Ron and Hermione with an unreadable stare, as though trying to communicate something, and Seamus was at a loss. What was going on? Was he alright? Seamus knew the kind of weakness that induced wavering legs. He knew it all too personally these days.

But Harry didn't appear in need of help. "We need to get going," he said.

Seamus was blurting out his concern before he realised it, taking half a step forwards. "What are we going to do, then, Harry? What's the plan?" A plan. They needed a plan. Harry was here to bring change, to stop all the shit that was going down, and Seamus would be damned if he didn't help. He would bloody well be a part of it. If nothing else, the detention he'd endured earlier that afternoon that had left him still a little weary despite his restorative and Healing sleep insisted upon that much. He'd had enough of being punished already.

"Plan?" Harry said, turning his attention towards Seamus blankly. He stared for a moment before continuing. "Well, there's something we – Ron, Hermione and I – need to do, and then we'll get out of here."

Seamus felt his stomach drop to his feet, and from the silence around him he wasn't the only one. Abruptly, his bout of excitement and motivation died. _What_?

"What do you mean 'get out of here'?" Neville asked with a confused frown.

"We haven't come back to stay," Harry said, rubbing distractedly at his scar in a way that Seamus detachedly recalled him doing when he grew agitated. He winced slightly as though the scar pained him. "There's something important we need to do –"

"What is it?" Neville interrupted.

"I – I can't tell you," Harry muttered.

Seamus watched their exchange as he would a tennis match, back and forth, back and forth. He watched Neville warily with the hope that he wouldn't let this drop. Harry couldn't leave. He couldn't. Not now, not after they'd endured so much already.

"Why can't you tell us?" Neville, blessedly, persisted. "It's something to do with fighting You-Know-Who, right?"

Out of respect for what Potterwatch had said of using Voldemort's name, they'd agreed to use the euphemistic pseudonym when referring to him verbally if not on a communally mental level. Even so, despite that agreement, Seamus felt irked by it. He was done with this. He was done with being scared, with waiting for something to happen and taking his punishments while he did so. Now Harry was leaving.

"Well, yeah," Harry said, a little regretfully.

"Then we'll help," Neville said. Seamus found himself nodding, saw those around him in fierce agreement, a mixture of enthusiasm and solemnity. Seamus understood that. He felt just that much and stared at Harry fixedly with the hope that, even should Harry not return the stare, he could somehow convey his feelings on the matter.

"You don't understand," Harry said, a very apparent touch of frustration in his tone. Seamus recognised that. Harry had always had a bit of a short fuse and, as admittedly bedraggled and compromised as he was, it was understandable that he wouldn't take delays well. "We – we can't tell you. We've got to do it. Alone."

"Why?" Neville asked calmly, and Seamus silently blessed his persistence once more. He doubted he would have been able to manage an increasingly agitated Harry quite so well. He'd never been able to.

"Because," Harry huffed, rubbing his scar once more. He spoke with slow, deliberate words, as though struggling to translate a difficult concept. "Dumbledore left the three of us a job, and we weren't supposed to tell – I mean, he wanted us to do it, just the three of us."

 _Like hell that's going to happen_ , Seamus thought, and would have said as much had Neville not spoken before he could. "We're his Army. Dumbledore's Army. We're all in it together, and we've been keeping it going while you three have been off on your own –"

"It hasn't exactly been a picnic, mate," Ron interrupted with a sigh.

Seamus couldn't help but shoot him a glare. Not a picnic? Ron had no idea. He had _no_ _idea_ what had been going on at Hogwarts, and he had the hide to say that it had been hard for them? Ron didn't know what it had been like to endure the detentions of the Carrows, the oppression under Snape's leadership. He didn't know what it was like to be left waiting for word of _anything_ , to cling to only a feeble hope as the news pumped through the papers practically detailed their demise. Ron didn't know what it was like having his best friend and boyfriend on the run, not hearing a word from him and even disappearing from the papers, possibly even –

Seamus cut the thought off before he could let it manifest further. His fingers had curled into fists at his side, and he hadn't even realised until Parvati dropped a hand to it to wrap his fingers in a loose hold. She didn't otherwise acknowledge his agitation, but it as enough. Parvati had grown strangely perceptive of such things.

"I never said it had," Neville was saying, "but I don't see why you can't trust us. Everyone in this Room's been fighting and they've been driven in here because the Carrows were hunting them down. Everyone in here's proven they're loyal to Dumbledore." He paused for a fierce moment of emphasis, before stating, "Loyal to you."

Had Seamus needed any further confirmation that Neville had stepped into his leadership shoes it was that. He spared him a glance, and in that moment he knew. He knew that, regardless of Harry's persistence, regardless of what he needed done, they would all step forward and help. Whether he liked it or not.

Apparently not, Seamus saw, as Harry continued with another frustrated sigh. "Look," he began, but then he was interrupted.

"We got your message, Neville! Hello, you three. I thought you must be here."

As one, everyone in the room turned their attention from Harry, Ron and Hermione and back to Arianna's portrait. As Seamus turned himself, he blinked in surprise as he saw Luna clamber over the frame, and then right behind her…

Everything else in the room faded. Everything else of importance was abruptly shunted to secondary significance. Seamus forgot about Harry, about his quest, about the war entirely, and his gaze focused on the one person in the room – in the world – that mattered.

"Dean!"

* * *

A/N: Ah... I'm sorry for the cliff-hanger. But at least it's a good one, not a morbid hanging! See you next time.


	17. Chapter 17 - Seventh Year - Part IV

**Chapter 17: Seventh Year - Part IV**

Dean got an impression of a wide, open room, hanging curtains and the tapestries in the house colours and designs, hammocks strung from overhead. Then he heard his name shouted. Dean didn't get a chance to glance in the direction of the speaker, had barely clambered down from the passageway to Aberforth's, before the entire body weight of his best friend crashed into him.

There was no thought in the matter. No question and no hesitancy. Dean was wrapping his arms around Seamus before he even looked at him, and Seamus squeezed him in his own embrace around his waist so hard that it almost hurt. Dean was only dimly aware of the other surprised and welcoming voices around him because no one else mattered. He'd come to fight a war against Voldemort but more importantly than that, he'd come because of Seamus.

Seamus was saying something into his shoulder, his mutters muffled by Dean's jacket and the surrounding babble. Dean didn't really mind; he couldn't care less what anyone else was saying, and, disregarding that anyone might see him or what they might think because he _just didn't care_ , he dropped his chin and pressed a fierce kiss to the top of Seamus head.

Was it sickening that, in that moment, Dean thought it was the most perfect thing that Seamus was just the right height for him to do so?

They didn't draw away from one another even slightly, though a mess of activity rapidly bubbled with Dean's arrival. He was vaguely aware of the excitement surrounding the similar arrival of Ginny, Fred, George and Lee Jordan not far behind him, but he didn't spare them a glance. He'd known they were there. They'd travelled from the Hog's Head one after the other.

It was only when George's voice, ringing out of the buzz of excitement, called everyone to attention that Dean had the presence of mind enough to raise his head from Seamus' hair. It was very, very hard to think of anything except Seamus still wrapped around him, the warmth of him in his arms and the knowledge that he was here, that he was alright, that he was, at least as long as Dean had a hold of him, safe. Because no way in hell would Dean ever let anything happen to him.

"So what's the plan, Harry?" George asked, and immediately a blanketing hush fell.

Dean glanced vaguely in Harry's direction, his cheek pressing into the top of Seamus' head and arms unconsciously wrapping more tightly. Seamus twisted slightly to glance as well but similarly failed to withdraw his embrace. As one, they and everyone else in the room stared at the Boy Who Lived.

For his part, Harry looked nothing if not a riot of distress and frustration. He was staring at Ginny as though she was an apparition. "There isn't one," he said shortly.

"Just going to make up as we go along, are we?" Fred said, grinning widely. "My favourite kind."

"You've got to stop this," Harry abruptly barked before swinging his gaze to Neville. "What did you call them back for? This is insane –"

"We're fighting, aren't we?" Dean spoke up, pulling only slightly away from Seamus as he drew Harry's attention. He pulled his fake galleon, inscribed with Neville's message, from his pocket. "The message said Harry was back and we were going to fight. I'll have to get a wand, though –"

'You haven't got a wand?"

Seamus abruptly yanked himself from Dean's grasp, drawing away to stare up at him in horror. As he did, Dean's gaze fell upon him and in an instant the rest of the room faded away. The ensuing words swirling around them faded. Despite the gravity of their situation, the battle that Dean _knew_ they were about to fight and something about Ravenclaw and a lost diadem or whatever, he couldn't look away. Because Seamus… Seamus wasn't alright.

He looked like he'd been beaten within an inch of his life. A dark, mottled bruise stained half of his face, a sickly mixture of colours as though half healed and smacked into renewal once more. A cut sliced through his eyebrow, splitting it in too, and looked only newly made, while another curved down from his chin to his neck. His other cheek was puffy and swollen as though it had been only recently struck, the eye above it blackened. He was a mess, and it broke Dean's heart to see it.

"God, Seam," he heard himself whisper, reaching to cup his hands around Seamus' face with gentle, tentative fingers. "What the hell…?"

Seamus let himself be held but he was clearly distracted, eyes fiercely wide and dark in the gloom of the room. "You don't have a fucking wand, Dean? What the bloody hell are you doing here, then?"

"Of course I'd come," he said, swallowing through the tightness seizing his throat. He wanted to ask Seamus who had done this to him so he could tear their limbs off, even if he suspected he already knew. "Of course I'd… Seamus, I need to borrow your wand."

"'Course," Seamus said without hesitation, frowning deeply. "Until we can find you another one, like. You're not running around like an idiot if you haven't got anything to defend yourself with."

Ignoring the fact that Seamus' assumption would mean that _he_ was rendered wandless, Dean shook his head. "No, just – just for a second. Can we…?" Glancing around them, Dean noticed that the cluster of students in the Room of Requirement, Fred and George and Lee ncluded, had broken off into smaller groups to talk amongst themselves with frowning yet determined faces. He caught a glimpse of Susan across the room standing alongside Parvati, of Lavender and Hannah, saw Ron and Hermione talking to Harry with a brightly smiling Luna at his side before Neville pointed them across the room and they started towards the distant door. Wherever they were going, however, Dean didn't have the headspace to consider. He had other priorities, and grabbing onto Seamus' wrist, he pulled him in the direction of what looked to be curtained-off sections in the room.

"Dean, what -?" Seamus began, but cut himself off as Dean urged him inside and drew the curtains around them. He was turning and wrapping Seamus in his arms once more, because after so long Dean would be damned if he'd waste a second without.

"Fuck, Seamus, what happened to you? Was it them? Was it the Carrows?"

"I –" Seamus started, the surprised note to his voice replacing his previous demand. He didn't draw away from Dean, simply returning his embrace as though he was just as desperate for the contact. "Yeah, of course. They're always the ones that dish out punishment, like. It's not so bad, though. Don't worry about it."

 _I'm going to kill them,_ Dean thought, murderous intent flooding through him. He'd never felt such a thing before but in an instant he knew that, should he happen across either one of these Carrows, he would do all in his power to destroy them. He wouldn't regret it in the least, either. "Not so bad?"

"No, not so bad, like."

Dean squeezed his eyes tightly closed as his chin pressed into the top of Seamus' head once more. Not so bad meant he'd had worse, and Dean couldn't let himself consider about that. It was horrible enough to hear Luna speak of it; having the evidence before him made it so much more real. So much worse.

Steeling himself, Dean drew away from Seamus slightly, though he couldn't quite bring himself to lower his arms. "Can I borrow your wand?"

"I already said you could," Seamus said, reaching into his pocket and drawing his wand. The familiar, pale pearwood, nearly as long as Dean's own had been, was placed with absolute confidence into Dean's hand. Now knowing from Harry about wands and their loyalties as Dean did, he couldn't help but feel somehow honoured with the speed at which Seamus offered it to him.

Dragging Seamus to what looked like a bed of sorts – and surprisingly soft considering it didn't appear to have a mattress beneath the piled blankets – Dean deliberately sat them both down. Seamus didn't complain, for once in his life seeming content to do what he was told. Maybe he was simply as captivated by their reunion as Dean found himself. He could barely hear those outside of the curtained off area – or maybe it was Muffled? He wasn't sure. He didn't care.

"What are you doing, like?" Seamus asked as Dean experimentally tossed the wand between his hands. It wasn't as unfamiliar and uncomfortable as he'd expected it to be.

"I'm going to fix your bruises," Dean said. "They look really painful."

"They're not – wait, what? All of them?" Seamus asked, tone just a little startled. "And where'd you learn healing from? You can't heal, can you?"

Dean glanced up from the wand and met Seamus' curious gaze. Ignoring his question, he stared at him intently. "There's more?"

"More what?"

"Bruises. Than just those on your face."

Seamus shrugged, a hand rising unconsciously to his chest. "They're just bruises, Dean. It's nothing that bad, like."

Even the offhanded way he said it pained Dean. With tentative hands, he slipped his grasp from where they'd been unable to release Seamus' shoulder to the hem of his shirt and lifted. At the first sight of the broad, spreading purple bruise coating his lower ribs, he closed his eyes to bite back a heartfelt wince.

Seamus slapped at his hand to release his shirt. "Oi, it's not all that bad, like. Cut it out, you're making me nervous."

Dean blinked up at him, staring into Seamus' eyes for any glimpse of suppressed pain. He didn't know if it was a good thing or not that he saw none. "I'm really sorry this happened to you. I'll fix it."

"You're sorry?" Seamus raised an eyebrow. "What the bloody hell are you apologising for? You didn't do it."

"Yeah, but if I'd been here –"

"Being Muggleborn, you would have gotten a whole lot worse, and you know it."

Dean couldn't deny that but he also couldn't deny his regret. He _really_ wished he'd been at Hogwarts. He would have killed the Carrows at the first suggestion that they were going to touch Seamus – or any of them, for that matter – before they'd gotten the chance to cast a Cruciatus Curse. Even knowing that had he truly been here the circumstance would have been different, his thoughts weren't shaken on the matter. Dean utterly hated the faceless bastards who'd inflicted such damage.

Pressing his lips together, Dean didn't say anymore as he raised Seamus' wand and set to casting a smattering of spells to ease the bruising. It only made him feel marginally better to see the clearing of discolouration, the shrinking of the swelling and the slight, sceptical tightness around Seamus' eyes disappear. He raised Seamus' shirt once more and turned his attention to the injuries on his torso, pausing over a sliced wound across his lower abdomen that looked newly healed. Someone had clearly done their work. Recalling Luna's words, he wondered if it had been Parvati, Hannah or Michael Corner.

"Shit. So you really do know your stuff."

At Seamus' words, just as he finished wiping clean a final bruise that splodged across Seamus' ribs, Dean raised his gaze. Seamus's scepticism had well and truly faded to be replaced with open incredulity and just a little awe. Dean shrugged awkwardly. "I had to. You know, when stuff… happened. While I was on the run."

Seamus' expression hardened. "You were hurt?"

"Oh, don't pull that shit with me after what I've just seen."

Unexpectedly, Seamus actually fell quiet without further protest. He dropped his gaze down to his stomach, touching a tentative hand to his ribs. "Seems like you've always been patching me up, like."

"What?"

"Even when we were kids, you always carried around Burn Cream for when I exploded something in my own stupid face. Seems like the habits carried over, yeah?"

"This isn't really the same thing as you setting fire to yourself," Dean said with a failed attempt at a smile.

Seamus didn't look up, nodding with eyes downcast. They were barely a handbreadth apart from one another, knees touching and close enough that Dean wouldn't have to reach to wrap his arms around Seamus once more as he sorely wanted to. Strange, that once upon a time he had been almost hesitant to do so. Now, the thought of hesitating was the most foreign and ridiculous notion in the world.

"'Lot's changes since then, right?" Seamus murmured.

Dean nodded. "Yeah."

"You… you're alright, aren't you?" Still staring downward, Seamus' chin still tucked, he shifted with just the vaguest hint of awkwardness.

Dean nodded once more, even if Seamus wouldn't be able to see the gesture. "I'm fine."

"You… what are you even doing here, like? Why were you with Luna?"

There were so many things that Dean could say to that, all of them true, but he settled for the most simple. The most truthful. "Luna and I bumped into each other. And as for why I'm here, of course I'd come if this is where the fighting's going to be. It's where you are, after all."

That finally urged Seamus to lift his gaze. Scratches still marred his skin – through his eyebrow, across his chin – but it was a blessed relief that his face was absented of the painful-looking bruises. For a moment, he just stared at Dean, and then his expression softened into one that Dean had only begun to see the summer before. The very first time was at King's Cross Station when Seamus had first told him he 'liked' him, and Dean would never forget that moment – the evolution from sad to euphoric had never afflicted him so fast before.

"You're an idiot," Seamus said. "Don't you think you should be running in the other direction, like? I would be."

"No you wouldn't," Dean replied, shaking his head. "Especially if it was me in your place."

Another moment of staring and then Seamus shook his own head. "You're right. I wouldn't. Not if you're here." Then he raised a hand to Dean's head, curling his fingers to brush through his slightly overgrown hair. "I've missed you like hell, Dean."

That was it for Dean. That was all he could take with Seamus sitting right before him, saying such words and wearing such an expression. Without thought, Dean found himself kissing him. Leaning across the distance between them, hands drawn to Seamus' head in turn, he kissed him as he had longed to for what felt like so long. To hold him, to touch him, to know he was there and he was alright, despite the cuts and the rest of the bruises that Dean hadn't been able to heal. Seamus, far from pulling away from him, immediately drew towards and wrapped his arms around Dean in turn.

It was a blessing that, in spite of everything, the Room of Requirement had provided them with enough privacy that Dean didn't have to stop himself. Because he couldn't. He couldn't stop as he pressed himself against Seamus, arms dropped to drag around his waist and tugged him from his knees to drag Seamus on top of him in turn. The curtains were only thin, but Dean felt confident that they were Muffled given that the sound from the rest of the room was so distant. It was enough that when Dean, pausing only briefly to draw his lips from Seamus' and gasp for breath, wasn't concerned for being heard.

He didn't think he would have cared anyway. Not now.

Seamus didn't seem to care either. Practically in Dean's lap as he was, his hands curled around Dean's head tugged him down to meet his lips once more. Dean obliged instantly, arms tightening as his hands slipped beneath Seamus' shirt. He could feel the bump of a bruise that he'd missed in his brief bout of healing, even if Seamus didn't acknowledge as his fingers grazed across it, and for a split second he was furious once more. At the Carrows, at Snape and the rest of the Death Eaters, at _Voldemort_ , but then it was gone, because Seamus had drawn away only slightly to whisper in a brush of hot breath against Dean's lips. "Fuck, I missed you so much."

Nothing else mattered in the world. Nothing else but the feel of Seamus pressed against him, of the weight of him, the tight clasp of his fingers around Dean's head. Dean found himself grow groggy as a longing and desperate heat suffused him, rushing from his throbbing chest right down to his fingertips. He blinked blearily at Seamus. At his closed eyes, at the dark blond flop of his fringe hanging over his face, at a scratch adorning one cheek, more pronounced now for the vanquished swelling. It wasn't old but it would scar, Dean could tell. He found himself pressing a kiss against it tenderly and felt Seamus shiver in response.

There was no possible way that Dean wouldn't touch him. Seamus, from his increasingly frantic motions as he shifted and clung to Dean, pressing kisses on his lips, his face, his neck and anywhere else he could reach, told Dean wasn't alone in his desperate need. Right there, on the makeshift bed of heaped blankets and soft pillows, Seamus on top of him and fumbling for the front of his jeans, Dean found his own hands on the waistband of Seamus' slacks.

A muffled groan sounded from Seamus' lips as soon as Dean grasped him, one that he found himself echoing as Seamus reached for his own arousal. He was hot, desperate, and in that moment nothing seemed more necessary than to feel the whole of Seamus, to hold him and touch him and to invoke those gasps and moans that Dean had explored too briefly the summer before. He found himself falling backwards onto the blankets, Seamus pressing himself on top of him, and it was perfect. Even more perfect when Seamus reaffirmed his grasp around the back of Dean's head and fit their lips together into kiss after kiss that was so hot, so deep and encompassing, that Dean lost himself to the pure feeling.

The feeling of Seamus' hand upon him, of his own curled around Seamus' hardness in kind, send sparks of pleasure down his spine, flushing through the pit of his belly. Dean bit back another groan, his free hand wrapping around Seamus' back as he found himself bucking against him, seeking the release that couldn't be far in coming. Not then. Definitely not then. They'd explore one another before, though never extensively and never quite so frantically. But Dean _needed_ to feel Seamus. He needed it as he never had before.

It was over quickly. In a mess of kisses and gasps, grasping and pressed bodies and the hard, awkward tugging of hands, Dean found himself coming with a strangled pant into Seamus' fist before, barely a moment later, Seamus whimpered into his shoulder and he felt wetness coat his own fingers. He was hot, panting, pressed flat to the bed of blankets with Seamus' weight on top of him, but it hardly mattered. He didn't care that they'd made a mess between them, that they were in the middle of the Room of Requirement and could very likely have been walked in upon. Dean gasped for breath in the glow of release and, disregarding the stickiness that dribbled across his hand, drew his arms back around Seamus to hold him against him.

Seamus didn't seem to mind; if anything, he pressed himself against Dean's chest, arms wrapping around him in turn, just as tightly. The blissful satisfaction, the heady aftermath, the Muffled quietness… it was simply too perfect. Dean never wanted to move again.

There was a war going on just outside their door, but he didn't care. There were Death Eaters to be fought, but it didn't matter. They couldn't remain in isolation forever, but just for a few moments longer, Dean would hold onto this. To the fading tingles of pleasure, a pleasure that was replaced with what in many ways felt like the even greater satisfaction of simply holding Seamus against him, Dean let himself have those moments.

For a time, they lay in silence. Then, as Dean could have anticipated he would be the one to, Seamus broke it. "I didn't know where you were."

Dean swallowed tightly, his arms tightening at the same time. "I know. No one was supposed to."

"You made me worry, like, you bastard." Seamus words were muffled against Dean's shoulder as he turned his face into it, pressing his forehead firmly against the bony part of Dean's collarbone.

"I know. I'm sorry."

"You better bloody well be. You're better make it up to me."

Dean found himself smiling. It was such a Seamus thing to say. "I will. You too, though."

"Me too what?" Seamus asked, finally raising his head to look up at Dean. Dean was glad for the fact. Even injured as it was – though blessedly less so than it had been – he hadn't seen anywhere near enough of Seamus' face to compensate for their time apart. He found himself raising a hand to the side of Seamus' head, his fingers grazing across his cheek before drawing up to tug loosely at his hair.

"You better make up for worrying me too," Dean murmured, meeting Seamus' eyes. He'd never known there could be so much weight behind a stare before he'd spent the summer conversing as much in looks as words – thought with lots of words too – with Seamus about anything and everything. He'd never had that with anyone else before. No one but Seamus.

"Huh?" Seamus replied, eyebrow rising.

"I heard about what happened at Hogwarts. You don't think I wasn't absolutely terrified?"

Seamus pouted slightly, an expression of petulance so familiar from their years of growing up together that in spite of himself Dean found himself smiling. Seamus, as if he couldn't help himself either, grinned a moment later. "Serves you right."

"It does not."

"You worried me, so you got a taste of your own medicine, like."

"Bastard."

"You're the fucking asshole that buggered off."

Dean chuckled. It wasn't a funny thing to talk about, wasn't amusing at all, but the fact that he was with Seamus made it just… easier. Better. It made him realise that, at least in some regards, that was all behind him. "Yeah. And I'm sorry about that."

Seamus was silent for a moment, his pout dying with his smile. Then he fidgeted atop of Dean until he could lean forwards enough to press his lips against Dean's. It was a short but weighted kiss, flooded with meaning. "Yeah. I'm sorry too."

They would talk. Soon, because there was so much to talk about. But not now. Not right now, because for Dean, those words and they fact that he was right there at Seamus' side _now_ , was good enough. They would have to move, had a war to fight, but just for that moment – for that eternal moment – it was good enough.

* * *

It began very much as it had when they'd heard the invasion of Death Eaters the year before. Seamus wouldn't have moved from his curl around Dean for anything else, not even when the murmurs of conversation just beyond the curtains of their private space sounded just loud enough with words of, "Need to get them out" and "Gather the younger kids… to Aberforth…" They were being evacuated? That was probably a good idea.

Seamus found he couldn't really move, though. He was still weary from his detention earlier that day, despite the few hours of sleep he'd managed when he'd come back to the Room. He wasn't hurting even distantly anymore, though, and the numbing had retreated from Parvati's and Dean's combined Healing efforts. Seamus still couldn't believe that _Dean_ had been the one to Heal him. Neither of them had ever shown a particular propensity for such skills in the past.

Dean was warm beneath him, solid, the feel of his arms wrapped around Seamus just as Seamus clung to him unwavering. Seamus hadn't moved from resting his cheek against Dean's chest, glorying in the strong, steady sound of his heartbeat just beneath his ear. He was perfectly content to stay just like that forever.

He was talking. Seamus found he was often talking these days, simply as a way to fill the silence, as a comfort, when his mind was otherwise preoccupied. He barely attended to what he was saying, was only aware that Dean was listening attentively regardless and occasionally contributed.

"… don't think Susan ever actually intended to be the spokeswoman, like, but she's pretty good at it. Reckon she'll end up as Minister for Magic one day or something, maybe follow after her aintín and go into the Wizengamot. I wouldn't put it past her, 'cause she's bloody brilliant, like."

"She's always been brilliant," Dean murmured.

"Her and Hannah, they basically run Hufflepuff house between the two of them, which is sort of funny because if we're going from prefects, like, it should be Hannah and _Ernie_ but then Ernie's always been a bit of a pillock. Besides, I think Ernie's a bit intimidated by Susan, actually."

"Intimidated?"

"Yeah. She's smart and assertive and all that, and she's got two Healers-in-Training who practically shadow her, and around here the Healers are the ones that are the most… I don't know, precious I guess you could say? Got to keep an eye out for 'em and make sure they're alright."

Dean hummed a sound that was a little vexed and when Seamus shifted to tip his gaze up towards him it was to see his frown of growing anger. Dean, noticing him, glanced his way and visibly fought to erase the expression. "I guess they would be, considering what's going on."

"It's not all bad, like, Dean," Seamus said in an attempt at soothing him. His words were a lie, because they might have learned to live with the trials and tortures but it was never not bad. Dean didn't have to know that, though. "Besides, the girls and Michael are getting really good at what they do."

"So is it Parvati or Michael that's Susan's second shadow?" Dean said, smiling slightly in a way that told Seamus he was teasing him. The gesture was only a little forced. "I would assume it's Parvati since that they're friends, but Michael has always seemed to admire Susan from afar."

"Oh, it's Parvati," Seamus said casually, turning his head to drop his ear back onto Dean's chest. The steady _thu-THUMP, thu-THUMP_ was soothing. "She's been tailing Susan around since they started dating at Christmas, like."

There was an extended pause in which Seamus fought not to crack a grin before, his fingers tightening unconsciously in their grasp around his back, Dean seemed to unfreeze. "What?"

"Yeah, they're pretty solid."

"Susan and Parvati are dating?"

"Yeah," Seamus closed his eyes, assuming an impression of utter ease. It was only half feigned. "I mean, I always sort of suspected that Susan had a bit of an interest outside of boys, and when Parvati and me started hanging out together in sixth year, like, it was a little obvious."

Dean shifted beneath him. "And you didn't tell me that?"

"Did you want to know?"

"I would have been curious, especially seeing as I kind of thought you and Parvati might have had something going on last year."

"Stupid," Seamus muttered, yet finally couldn't help but crack a smile. "I like _you_ , idiot."

Dean might have replied to that if given the chance, but that was when the first resounding _BOOM_ rocked the school. Seamus was jolting upright immediately, swinging his attention over his shoulder in the direction of the sound with his hand dropping to his wand where he'd stowed it after Dean gave it back to him but minutes before. Dean was up a split second later, nearly throwing Seamus off of him in his speed.

For a moment, nothing but silence flooded the Room of Requirement. Then, when another _BOOM_ sounded, a sharp bark to order was called in what Seamus recognised as being Neville's voice. "It's happening! Everyone, come on, we've got to get the younger kids out of here. Susan, Hannah, you guys head over to Hufflepuff. Terry and Padma, Ravenclaw. Parvati? Can you go with Seamus and -"

Seamus was throwing himself to his feet and scrambling through the curtains in an instant. He was aware that Dean leapt himself after him, but only because Seamus knew that he could be in the middle of a duel and still know exactly where Dean was. He burst through the draping curtains just as Parvati spun from a short, sharp conversation with Susan and started towards him. Her gaze, hard and focused, locked upon Seamus as soon as he started towards her, and she met him halfway with Lavender in tow.

Neville was still calling orders, shouting at everyone that they needed to "Stake out the entrances" and "Make sure you stay in groups. Safety in numbers" as though he was a real war leader. Maybe he was. He was a leader, and they were at war, so…

They were at war. Seamus had known it but hadn't really _known_ until he'd first heard those distant sounds of explosions. Until he'd realised that they were being invaded. He should have realised.

"We need to get the kids out," Susan, still at Parvati's side, was saying rapidly. "If we bring them to the Room then they'll be able to escape down to the Hog's Head."

Seamus nodded, already turning to start towards the door to the corridor beyond. He nearly collided with Dean who stood right behind him. "Wait here," he said shortly. "Parvati and I will go –"

"What?" Dean interrupted him. "Fuck that, I'm not staying here when you're going."

"You haven't got a wand, Dean."

"Well, I'm hardly going to get one waiting here now, am I?"

Seamus frowned, sparing a glance for Susan and Hannah at his side as they in turn glanced between them. They hadn't yet had the chance to greet Dean since his return, but both were sensible enough to know when the situation required delay for sentimental reunions. Like now.

"Can't you just stop being a stubborn lump for once, like, and stay put," Seamus said, snapping his gaze back to Dean as his hand clenched unconsciously around his wand.

"It probably would be better if you just stayed here, Dean," Parvati said from behind Seamus, and he caught a glimpse over his shoulder of Lavender nodding her agreement alongside her. "We'll get you a wand as soon as we can, but it really wouldn't be safe –"

"No," Dean said sharply. He hadn't drawn his attention from Seamus for a second. "I'm going with you."

"Dean –"

"I'm going with you."

Dean had always been just as stubborn as Seamus, but this was different. Seamus got the sense that he was an immoveable statue that held every intention of standing his ground indefinitely. While not entirely uncharacteristic of him, there was something about it that just seemed… different. Different to before.

"We've really got to go," Hannah said quietly, exchanging a glance with Susan who nodded with a slight tip of her head.

"Yeah, we do," Dean agreed. Then he reached towards Seamus, hooked their arms together and, turning towards the door, pulled Seamus after him. Seamus, biting back his frustration – and ultimately his concern – allowed it. If Dean was going to be a stubborn bastard and follow him into potential danger then Seamus would just going to make sure he stood between him and anything they came across.

The sounds of many voices, of readying and questioning and determined answering sounded behind them as they hastened from the Room. Neville's words of "… going to go and find Professor Sprout to see if she can –" were the last Seamus heard before the door clicked shut behind them.

"We'll meet you back her in a jiffy," Hannah said, turning after where Susan, single-minded and determined herself, was already starting down the left hand corridor.

Seamus nodded, turning towards the right and starting away at a stride that became a jog. "Don't forget to use your coins if you need help, like," he called over his shoulder. "We'll be back in a second." Then they were starting at a real run, Dean, Parvati and Lavender falling into step alongside Seamus as they made a beeline for Gryffindor tower.

"The coins?" Dean asked as they descended the stairs.

"DA coins," Seamus explained. "We use them for practically everything to communicate these days if it's really important. Neville always said that we'd resort to that if we were ever in a fight, like."

"Neville," Dean echoed, and as they flew up a flight of stairs Seamus saw him shake his head. "So he really is the leader of the rebellion?"

"You didn't think so?"

"It's just unexpected. Like all of this, really."

"I don't know how unexpected a fight is," Parvati murmured between breaths, and Seamus knew without looking that a frown was settling on her brow. She was almost always frowning these days, but at least this time Seamus considered it was warranted.

They made short work of the trip to Gryffindor Tower, and though they knew their way it wasn't easy. Not because they came across anyone, but because of the sounds. The rumble of stonewalls stuck, the crackle of magic, the cries and shouts of pain or demand or excitement. Once, racing past one of the upper windows barely a corridor from Gryffindor Tower, Seamus couldn't help but slide to a stop and peer at the grounds beyond.

"Fucking hell," he whispered, but barely remained still for a moment before picking up his feet once more. Parvati's similar murmur and Lavender's gasp, his glance towards Dean to see his tightening jaw and tighter expression, said he wasn't the only one who wouldn't be able to shake the memory of what spread floors below them. The grounds were wreathed in fire, dark figures interspersed, the flare of magic vivid in the air. Maybe not a fight, not yet, but certainly the beginnings of one.

"Bravery and courage," Seamus called as they approached the Fat Lady at a run, footsteps echoing off the hollow walls. The portrait, for once, didn't have a witty anecdote to reply and swung open with a grim expression on her face. Seamus and his friends spilled into the common room.

It was clogged with Gryffindor's, possibly every single one that had attended that year squeezed into couches or huddled next to friends, staring out the window at the fiery display. Which, in actuality, wasn't really all that many. Especially for the older Gryffindors, many had taken to retreating to the Room of Requirement already.

At Seamus' entrance, those that remained snapped their attention towards the entrance and, despite Seamus knowing that there was little they themselves could do, the sight of he and his friends seemed to ease some of the younger kids. The fifth and sixth years not so much, though they at least looked a little more focused in their wide-eyed fear.

Seamus didn't waste a moment in dallying. Cupping his hands around his mouth in place of a Volumising Charm, he raised his voice. "Alright, everyone, not gonna lie but shit's going down. We've got to make for the Room of Requirement and if anyone asks me where the hell that is I'm disowning you. Make sure you've got your wands, like, 'cause we're not coming back for them."

It was a short announcement, unpeppered by comforts and flamboyance. To their credit, the Gryffindors didn't waste a moment before flowing into motion. Several hastened to their dormitories, clearly to retrieve their wands – of which Seamus was a little incredulous, because what kind of witch or wizard didn't have their wands on them at all times? The rest gathered around the entrance to the tower, shifting in place and peering attentively at Seamus and his friends.

"What's going on?" someone asked, echoed by questions of, "Is it the same as last year?" and "Is there a fight going on?" One of the sixth years, a girl Seamus had only really met that year but knew to be Taylor – nice, if a little nervy – stepped forwards. Her eyes darting between Seamus and Parvati almost imploringly. "Will it be safe to go through the corridors?"

"'Course it will be," Seamus said, waving a hand to brush aside her concern as though it was unwarranted. "Besides, that's why we're with you, like."

Taylor looked slightly calmer for his words, which Seamus took as a compliment. It took a lot to calm Taylor when she was nervous.

Catching a glimpse of Dean staring at him curiously, Seamus raised an eyebrow. "What?" he asked, voice low beneath the jittery murmurs of his housemates' conversations.

Dean shook his head, a slight smile touching his lips. "Nothing. Just that I guess Neville isn't the only one to develop some leadership skills."

Seamus snorted, muttered a short, "Bollocks," even as Parvati smiled faintly and murmured, "Yeah, there is that." He barely had a chance to glance her way, however, before a first year kid was pushing his way through the crowded Gryffindors at a stumble and tugging at his sleeve.

"Seamus," he asked – Kurt, Seamus remembered his name was – gaze wide-eyed and a little desperate. "Leo won't come out of the dorms. He – he thinks it's safer if he stays here and –"

Seamus didn't wait for Kurt to finish. Starting towards the first year dormitory, he climbed the steps two at a time and slipped through the half-open door into the semi-darkness. They didn't have time for delays.

Leo, a tiny kid with a buzz cut and a permanently owlish expression, was a mess of trembles and nearly erupting tears where he stood at the foot of his bed. Seamus crossed the room towards him, only half aware that Kurt followed behind him like a nervous puppy.

"Hey, Leo," Seamus said, crouching a little to draw into eyelevel with the kid. "We've got to go, now, like."

Leo looked up at him nervously. "I don't… wouldn't it be s-safer if we just s-stayed here?"

"No, it wouldn't," Seamus said. He wouldn't pussyfoot around the reality of the situation. Not now. It would be a disservice to the kids who'd already gone through enough that year.

"B-but if P-P-Professor McGonagall comes she won't know w-where –"

"Neville told us to bring you to the Room so we can get everyone we can out of the school," Seamus explained quickly. "Harry Potter's here, so it's all happening now, like. Better not being in the middle of that, yeah?"

"Harry Potter's here?" Leo asked, eyes abruptly widening further.

It was strange the effect Harry's name could have on the desperate. He really did give them hope. Seamus nodded. "Yeah. So if you want to help, like, we've got to go."

Apparently that was all the encouragement Leo needed, for a moment later and Seamus was following him out of the room, Kurt at his side. He barely spared a glance towards Dean – a frown, really, because Dean was smirking a little smugly, arms pointedly folded– before turning back to the room. "All right, you lot, let's go." Without ceremony, they left.

It was a credit to their understanding of the gravity of the situation that, when Seamus and Dean led the party at a run, Parvati and Lavender taking up the rear, everyone fell into step. They fled through the darkness from the Tower in the direction of the seventh floor and only stepped slowly enough for the younger kids to keep pace.

"We need to get you a wand, like," Seamus said as they ran, glancing to Dean. It was irrational to consider at that moment, what with the entirety of the rest of Gryffindor house following after them, but a glance out the window once more to see the fires spread further across the grounds induced a certain degree of concern.

Dean nodded. "Yeah, I know. I don't know where I'll get one, though."

"We could find a professor, maybe?"

"Why would a professor have one?"

"I don't know, maybe they've had the good sense to knock out a Death Eater or two already."

Scared whispers and repeats of "Death Eaters?" behind Seamus made him regret he'd spoken as he had. Only for a second, however, for as they rounded another corner it was to the sight of a pair of just such figures – or ones that looked very like them – striding up the corridor towards them.

Seamus skidded to a stop. He barely had time to erect a _Protego_ before an onslaught of spells struck. The sharp crack snap of spells pounding his shield rippled through the corridor. Shrieks and cries of Gryffindors sounded.

"Fuck!" Dean swore at his side. Seamus barely registered it as Dean turned an instant later and bellowed over the Gryffindor's heads. "Parvati! Lavender! Go back the other way!"

Seamus couldn't let himself think about Dean, about the Gryffindors. He had to focus on the Death Eaters, because they'd gotten in. Already? _How_? And how so deep as to infiltrate to the route from Gryffindor Tower to the seventh floor? Seamus didn't know and didn't have a second to consider it. He was too focused upon maintaining his shield, stoutly reinforcing it as first one spell then another struck it in hard, successive blows. He was only half aware that the Gryffindors behind him scampered in retreat.

 _Probably a good thing_ , he thought grimly. _I doubt this shield will last long_.

Seamus was scared. Struggling to maintain his shield and already feeling it waver, he was scared. Or at least he acknowledged he was, because he didn't really feel it. A lot had changed since the previous year when he could only duck and run for cover at the invasion of the Death Eaters. Seamus hadn't any more experience fighting Death Eaters, with protecting himself from magical attacks or with standing his ground and resolutely denying the urge to cower before a physical attack. But still.

He'd withstood worse.

There was a certain degree of courage to be had from accepting punishment again and again and still accepting more without cracking. Seamus knew that. He knew it even if he could never truly consider himself courageous. Seamus had stood up to the Carrows, to Snape's regime, to the threat of war and the resignation it induced in so many, for long enough. He'd learnt that he was strong enough for that at least. Strong enough to stand his ground. He'd come this far and he'd be damned if he'd cave before the attacks of two Death Eaters whose faces he couldn't even see for their hoods.

Seamus felt the moment that his _Protego_ bent inwards seconds before it would snap. He knew he couldn't wait for it to be broken. To do so would be to accept the strike of spells at full force then. Seamus didn't think of himself as a warrior, a fighter or even a duelist, but he knew his strengths and weaknesses enough to know that he wouldn't hold the _Protego_ for long. He knew which attacks he should retaliate with.

A spell struck, one more as Seamus let it, and then he dropped his _Protego_. Without a thought for fears, for the possibility of the Death Eaters getting a spell in, Seamus cast an explosion of magic that was so natural to him that he had never truly needed an incantation, even before he'd practiced wandless magic. A slash of his wand and fire erupted, a bursting flood of white-yellow light that cascaded away from him in an unavoidable sheet of flame. An earth-shattering explosion rocked the walls, stone sizzling in the heat of it. Thin cries sounded, only to be drowned out by the rumble of flame.

And then it dissipated.

Part of Seamus was horrified that he'd killed the Death Eaters. Another part was coldly satisfied, accepting that he should be happy if he had. Seamus didn't truly feel either horror or satisfaction, however. Not even as, with the evaporation of the blinding flame, he saw the crumpled, smoking figures discarded like burned dolls in the middle of the corridor. Seamus was breathing heavily, though more for the sudden heat that still radiated off the corridor than anything else. Sweat slicked his hand around his wand.

"Seamus… fucking hell…"

With a start, Seamus turned towards the sound of Dean's voice at his shoulder. He blinked, surprised, then abruptly horrified, because he'd known he was there but hadn't _known_. "What the fuck are you still doing here?"

Dean didn't look at him. He was staring at the bodies of the two Death Eaters with eyebrows risen so high they seemed to be escaping to his hairline. At the sight of his blank-faced surprise, Seamus felt a pool of dread settle in his gut. Not horror, not satisfaction but real dread. It wasn't that he _had_ killed the Death Eaters, but that Dean had seen it, and that Dean –

"That was bloody brilliant."

Dean apparently thought it was brilliant. Seamus stared up at him until Dean turned slowly towards him. Shaking his head, the barest hint of a smile touched his lips. "Seriously. Where did you learn to do that?"

Seamus shrugged a little awkwardly. He'd seen awe in Dean's expression before but never anything quite like that. "I didn't."

"Incredible…"

Seamus was still worried. He was still concerned that Dean, the idiot without a wand, had stayed behind with him when Dean himself had been the one to give the order to flee. But as something approaching an almost manic smile spread across Dean's face, Seamus couldn't bring himself to regret it too greatly.

Turning towards the smoking Death Eaters, Seamus shook his head. "Well, I guess it's started, then."

"Yeah, guess you could say that," Dean said. Then he slipped past Seamus and started towards the fallen figures.

Seamus hastened to follow after him, concern rising within him once more. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"Just seeing if one of them has a wand that didn't get singed to pieces," Dean replied, dropping to his haunches beside one and, with long fingers, gingerly picked at crisped robes, flicking one aside to reveal the charred remains of a wand. Dean didn't comment before turning to the other. He rose to his feet a moment later with a wand in hand, longer than his own had been and of a knotted dark brown wood but otherwise unremarkable. Seamus watched him as he regarded the wand with a slight frown.

"Well, it does feel a little weird, but I guess that's only to be expected."

"What?" Seamus asked, confused. "What does that mean?"

Dean shook his head. "I'll explain later. It's a wand, though, so it'll do. For now." Then he raised his gaze towards Seamus, offered a small smile and tipped his head in the direction the Gryffindors had run. "Shall we?"

Seamus didn't glance towards the remains of the Death Eaters as they turned and started off at a run back down the corridor. He wasn't sure he wanted to know. However, as they turned the first corner, he found himself asking anyway. "Dean. I don't suppose you saw if they were dead, like?"

Dean didn't reply for a moment, thought Seamus, head turned towards him as he was, saw him glance at him sidelong. Then he shook his head. "No. Sorry, I didn't see."

Seamus didn't ask further.

As it happened, they didn't have much of a chance to talk. Not when, spilling out at the top one of the wide stairwells, they beheld what could only be called a battle spread across the storeys beneath them. Seamus stared in real horror at the sight of it. Already? It had already started? He'd thought that… he'd hoped…

Already?

"Shit," he muttered eloquently.

Dean nodded at his side before turning fully towards him. He looked as scared as Seamus abruptly felt, real fear, which was saying something because as it gradually welled and manifested, Seamus wasn't entirely sure he'd been more scared in his life. The feeling was almost on par with the first time he'd been _Crucio_ -ed. "I guess it's a good thing I've got a wand?"

"Yeah, a good thing," Seamus agreed. Then they didn't speak any more. They didn't have to. Without a word, they launched themselves in step down the stairs and leapt into the frenzy of battling witches and wizards and flying spells. Seamus could only distantly hope his fellow Gryffindors had made it to the Room of Requirement.

The Entrance Hall and the surrounding corridors were the centre of the battle. It spilled out onto the courtyard, violent and blinding and crazed. A sea of students, professors and other robed figures – were they Order members? – fought side by side against the oncoming forces of what could only be Death Eaters. Casting before his feet had left the bottom step, Seamus saw it all only in snapshots. He would only remember those fragmented pieces with a detached mind when those in future would refer to the Battle of Hogwarts.

He saw cloaked figures, draped in black with hidden faces or revealed faces that wore snarls or cruel grins or both as they slashed spells with slicing wands.

He saw Order members fling _Protego_ charms into the air, hanging them like gossamer curtains that were torn to shreds in seconds. But the Order members didn't slowed and defended in the most explosive and offensive manner imaginable.

Seamus was aware of Dean at his side as he raised his wand and sent fiery streams at every Death Eater he saw, his explosions erupting around him almost of their own accord in between hastily erected Shield Charms. Dean always stuck to his side. Always, throughout the entire fight.

He saw a flurry of darkness, felt a chill on the air and knew even before he saw them that Dementors swept through their midst. Seamus was casting before he even thought about it, instinctive and desperate, scrambling for the memories and the feelings that would invoke his Patronus. The pale wraith of his fox burst from his wand, darting through the air alongside a cascade of others, and from the corner of his eye Seamus saw Dean's own corporeal Patronus struggle to pry free of his stolen wand.

A swan. Seamus had never really appreciated that the bird suited Dean so much until the moment the long, fluid shape soared after the Dementors in a vicious frenzy.

Walls crumbled. A stairwell exploded to pieces. The doors to the Great Hall were blasted from their hinges, and those into the castle itself fared little better. Seamus wasn't quite sure how it happened, didn't see it. His whole attentio was focussed upon dodging the attacks of a pair of Death Eaters, narrowly avoiding behind struck until he _was_ hit. The blow threw him bodily from the Entrance Hall and into the courtyard itself.

He heard Dean cry at that, shouting a fierce curse that was more heartfelt than articulate. Seamus didn't see what became of those Death Eaters, rolling to his feet as he was, but they'd already disappeared as Dean seemed to Apparate to his side once more, concern twisting his expression. He asked, voice a strangled demand, if Seamus was alright.

Seamus was fine. He said he was fine, even if he was rocked just a little bit. He'd had worse than that before.

As the sky was painted with fire and the vibrant colouration of hundreds of spells, he saw Susan appear in a tsunami of thrown spells. He saw Hannah seem to leap from thin air half a courtyard away and disappear again with a fallen student in tow. He saw Parvati as she battled a Death Eater just a little away from Dean and holding her own, and at one point Neville saw racing through their midst alongside Professor Sprout, laden with pot plants of all things. Plants? Seamus didn't get the chance to see what they were. He didn't really care, and thought of them was gone from his mind moments later.

Gargoyles sprung to life under McGonagall's bellowing direction. A sea of what looked to be giant spiders spill from the forest – remarkable, horrifying – and even more remarkably, an actual giant thundering past in an avalanche of sound. A Dark giant, evidence told, wreaking havoc of the grounds and the castle as it crashed into it the walls.

Seamus saw it all. He glimpsed fragments and pieces, was barely aware of the spells he fired in his own offence and attacking retaliation. At one point he was sure he saw Harry running past, leaping over a fallen Death Eater and charging across the courtyard with single-minded determination, but Seamus wasn't sure. He couldn't tell.

There were more important things to concern him.

He didn't know how long they fought for. Seamus couldn't recall how many times he was struck by a spell and throw to the ground, how many times he was cursed and Dean, always at his side, provided the counter curse. He didn't know how many times he did the same for Dean in return, but it didn't matter either. Seamus' fingers began to throb for the tightness he held his wand. Sweat coated his brow but he hardly noticed. His gut felt like it had been pounded by a heavy fist, but it wasn't of concern. All that mattered was fighting, defending and making it out alive.

Until it stopped.

Seamus had noticed, if distractedly, that the Death Eaters were thinning. He didn't notice for real, though, until he heard the sibilant voice hiss straight into his mind. It lurched him to a halt mid-step.

 _"You have fought valiantly. Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery."_

Seamus froze. Voldemort? Voldermort was –

 _"Yet you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist me, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish this to happen. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss and a waste."_

Seamus found himself turning slowly to Dean. Saw Dean turn just as slowly to him.

 _"Lord Voldemort is merciful. I command my forces to retreat immediately. You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat your injured."_

He was barely aware of the Death Eaters, breathing heavily in the sudden stillness of the fight, make their way from the courtyard and sink into the shadow. He met Dean's wide-eyes with his own and it was all he could do to swallow back the upwelling of bile that flooded the back of his throat. Dispose of your dead? Seamus hadn't… he hadn't even seen…

A glance to his side showed the bodies of those fallen that he _had_ see but hadn't acknowledged. Hadn't understood. Fallen? They were injured, not dead. They weren't –

 _"I speak now, Harry Potter, directly to you,"_ the voice continued, and Seamus couldn't help but drag his attention around him. In search of Harry or the voice, he wasn't sure. Both, perhaps. He hoped Harry wouldn't be stupid enough to listen. Terrified as he was of Voldemort, Seamus knew – he knew he shouldn't listen, no matter what.

" _You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself… I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest. If, at the end of that hour, you have not come to me, have not given yourself up, then battle recommences."_

Seamus wasn't the only one glancing around him now. Harry. Where was Harry? The tight ferocity in Dean's expression said he too wasn't the only one to hate Voldemort for his words.

 _This time, I shall enter the fray myself, Harry Potter, and I shall find you, and I shall punish every last man, woman and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One hour."_

The silence that followed seemed static and overloud. No one spoke and no one moved, the Death Eaters retreating already entirely disappeared. Seamus didn't know what to do. He didn't know what he was supposed to do. Weariness, made more apparent now in the aftermath of the fight, set his limbs to trembling.

He met Dean's eyes once more. Within them, he saw his own loss, his own confusion. When he managed to draw his gaze away, Seamus saw the dead around him once more. He saw them and realised them for what they were, that they were really dead and… and he couldn't even recognise most of them for the blood, for how broken they were, for their proneness, limp and facedown. The ones he did recognise were even worse.

This, Seamus realised, was war. In its entirety, the calm and despair after the storm – this was war.


	18. Chapter 18 - Seventh Year - Part V

**Chapter 18: Seventh Year - Part V**

The Great Hall looked like a war zone. Or behind the scenes of a war zone, where the retreated, the weary, the injured, the – the _dead_ were heaped in a weary and listless mass.

Dean had to remind himself that it didn't just look like one. It was one.

It felt surreal, even after the battle. Even after a seemingly endless amount of time in which Dean had fought with all his strength, casting with an unwieldy wand that just barely managed to serve him. It didn't feel right, that wand. It didn't work right. Dean had barely scraped through the chaos of fighting without serious injury. He doubted he would have survived at all had Seamus not been at his side the whole time. Dean doubted Seamus even realised how much he'd saved Dean's skin.

He'd changed, Dean saw. More than just the injuries he'd accumulated before Dean had returned to Hogwarts, the injuries that he'd healed. It was more than just the fact that Seamus seemed to consider them negligible when injuries had never been negligible in the past. It was one of the very reasons that Dean had carried around his Burn Cream for the last six years of his life.

Yet it _was_ more than that, though. The change lay in the resigned determination with which Seamus committed himself to the resistance, seemingly reflexively jumping to his feet when Neville gave an order. It was the unconscious leadership that he'd adopted, that he hadn't acknowledged even when Dean had pointed it out, and was so casual that it was apparent that he'd assumed it countless times before. Seamus had never been a leader, and Dean knew he didn't want to be either, but he'd done it. He'd done it anyway.

And then there was the fighting. First in the hallway – Dean had been nearly as blown away as the Death Eater themselves when Seamus' spell had exploded – and then afterwards. Dean wasn't an exceptional dueller, or even a great spellcaster, and he knew Seamus wasn't either. It simply wasn't their speciality. And yet Seamus had gotten around that. He'd channelled what came naturally to him, and his explosions and crackling bursts of flame were utterly destructive and overpowering.

It didn't scare Dean. Seamus was fantastic. Even more fantastic because he'd protected them both throughout the battle through the use of what had once been largely accidental magic to him.

They'd fought and struggled, and detached terror had reigned. Dean still wasn't sure how he'd survived throughout the battle without being killed, let alone injured. It still seemed a miracle.

Some, however, weren't so lucky.

The mood in the Great Hall was sombre. Quiet, or at least it was when not split by the sobs of the injured – or in some ways worse, by those that mourned the dead. Because there were. There were mourners and dead everywhere, and as Dean trailed alongside the rest of the fighters through the destroyed doorway of the Hall, he was overwhelmed by the sight of them.

There were… so many. Dean drew his gaze around the hall, to the blankets and makeshift beds that had been conjured into existence, and he counted dozens. He wasn't sure how many were dead or how many injured, because it was hard to tell. Crumpled figures, heads bowed and shoulders shaking, sat alongside or leant over those spread on the beds. Dean stumbled to a halt just inside the doors at the spread beyond. It was one of the most horrible things he'd ever seen. All of it, since he'd first climbed through the passageway into the Room of Requirement and found Seamus beaten black and blue, to that point had been utterly horrible.

"Fuck," he heard Seamus whisper at his side and with a struggle Dean dragged his gaze to him. Seamus was a mess – probably as much as Dean was himself – with his shirt torn and sweat streaking his face, drawing lines in the grime that darkened his skin. A cut along his jaw had smeared dark blood down his neck. Dean remembered he'd nearly had a heart attack when he'd seen it in the midst of battle.

Seamus wasn't looking back at him and so, with mouth suddenly painfully dry, Dean turned slowly back to the room. His gaze drew towards where he saw Parvati and – God, was that Lavender? Dean didn't know what he felt, couldn't even get a read on his own emotions but for a blank listlessness overwhelming the smothered horror, but he knew that was bad. It was very bad. He wasn't sure if he wanted to check if Lavender was even alive or not. Was it better to leave it to the unknown?

At the urging of those around him, staggering into motion once more, Dean started into the room. They passed clutches of kids, and blessedly few were of the younger years that Dean assumed – _hoped_ – had already fled the school. Many looked on the verge of falling to sleep, leaning against their fellows and kept awake only by falling tears or the pain that crumpled their faces and drew hands to clasp at their injuries.

Dean kept to Seamus side and, after a moment, he felt Seamus reach for and grasp his hand. He still wasn't looking at Dean when Dean glanced his way again but seemed distracted with dragging his gaze around the room. His eyes were wide, mouth hanging open slightly and ashen faced beneath the filth in a way that made him look younger than he was. Suddenly he wasn't the desperately capable seventeen-year-old soldier that had been fighting so viciously only minutes before, but instead was just a scared kid. Just like Dean.

Dean was scared. Of what had happened, or what was going to happen, because he knew they wouldn't give Harry up to Voldemort and that meant they would fight again. He was scared, but seeing Seamus scared too instilled some strength into him. Squeezing Seamus' hand enough that it finally drew his attention, Dean urged him across the room with a slight tug in the direction he could see Susan leaning tiredly against Hannah. He didn't try to smile, because to do so felt too hard. He just led the way.

Hannah raised her head at their approach, but Susan was clearly distracted. A glance to where she was looking saw her attention focused upon Parvati across the room where she hadn't moved from Lavender's side. Dean wasn't sure if she was bowed over crying or simply trying to Heal her friend. For herself, Susan looked like she wanted nothing more than to rush to Parvati's side, but for some reason was holding herself back. She looked the closest to tears that Dean had ever seen her.

It was only when they stopped directly before the girls that Susan dazedly dragged her gaze away. She blinked up at them, eyes drifting between Dean and Seamus before slowly turning away once more.

Not letting go of Dean's hand, Seamus crouched down before her. Strangely, in a motion that Dean hadn't seen before yet seemed natural enough that he had to have done it before, he reached forwards and ran a hand over the top of her head. There was something there. Something that Dean suspected might have grown that year as a support the likes he hadn't seen before. For once, Seamus didn't say anything, but simply waited, hand resting on Susan's head. Hannah didn't speak either, and Dean was left to stand above Seamus, still clasping his hand and watching.

When Susan finally spoke, her voice cracked just slightly. "I tried to comfort her, but I don't know what to do. She didn't want me there and I… I've never been good at Healing."

"There's nothing you can do," Hannah said soothingly with the voice who had said just those words several times already that evening. "I tried to, Susan, just like Parvati did, but I couldn't…"

"Is she -?" Seamus began before cutting himself off with a glance towards Hannah.

Hannah's face crumpled further than it already had been and she bit her lip as though it would stop her from shrivelling further. "I… Lavender is…"

She didn't need to say it. Dean didn't need to hear it either. He spared a glance across the room for Parvati in time to see Padma sink to the ground at her side and be all but ignored by her twin sister. Parvati didn't seem to want to be comforted, or maybe she simply couldn't be. Her best friend was…

Dean didn't know how he ended up seated on the ground, legs drawn to his chest and leaning against the wall alongside Susan. It just seemed to happen. He stared at his knees as Seamus adjusted himself to sit alongside him until, after a moment of fidgeting, he unlocked his hand from Dean's fingers to readjust it into a tight, one-armed embrace around Dean's waist instead. Dean didn't question it. He automatically drew his arm around Seamus in turn, resting his head against Seamus' as Seamus dropped his own to Dean's shoulder.

None of them spoke for a time. There didn't seem anything to say that would make it better. Dean stared blindly across the room. He was at a loss, just as everyone else appeared to be. What could they do? They had one hour in which they were supposed to 'dispose of their dead' and 'treat their injured', but what after that? Would they really fight? Would they all be killed? Because no matter how it terrified he was, how much Dean feared dying – or worse, having someone he cared for die, having _Seamus_ die – he knew they wouldn't give in. They wouldn't bow to Voldemort. Not after they'd tried so hard and lost so much already. They couldn't do that.

Dean was wondering idly if he should get up to help, should offer his help even if the thought of moving seemed impossible, when Seamus started speaking. Quietly at first, barely a murmur into Dean's neck, but enough to be heard.

"Hey, Dean? Do you remember our first night at Hogwarts? When we first got sorted and you sat next to me, like, even though you didn't know me?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah, I remember." And he did. He remembered it distantly, a half-forgotten memory that lay embedded in his bones: the loud, sandy-haired Irish boy with a bright smile was one he could never forget. He was the first person to really speak to Dean. He was the one who'd claimed him as his friend.

"Thought so," Seamus said. "I saw you and you were kind of as much of a loner as me, so I figured we could be friends. I guess it worked out, like, yeah?"

Dean found himself smiling feebly. Friends. Friends was… it felt like such a small word to describe what they were. Seamus wasn't just his friend; he was so much more than that. No matter what happened to either of them that night, Dean knew he always would be. He tightened his arm around Seamus' as he felt Seamus squeeze him just a little more in return. "Yeah, I guess it did."

Seamus fell quiet for a moment then. Only for a moment, however, before he began to talk. To just talk, because that was all it was – not in depth and nothing particularly heartfelt of meaningful. Seamus simply spoke, and he spoke in retrospect of times gone by as though their situation invoked nostalgia. Maybe Seamus was. Maybe that was just it.

About anything and everything. Seamus just spoke.

"… then I thought Snape was the worst possible Professor, like, right? And then Lockhart came along and he was terrible in an entirely different way…"

Dean found it soothing listening to him speak. It was strange, because at Shell Cottage he'd experienced the silence and, though it had agitated him a little, he'd liked it. It was strange because he'd been by himself for weeks and then in the company of Ted and Dirk and the goblins and in both instances there were only scarce intervals when they really talked to one another. It was strange because, when Seamus spoke, simply hearing the sound of his voice was comforting and seemed to briefly deter the rising foreboding encroaching upon him like a dark cloud.

"… went through that phase of snapping, like, every single quill, and I don't know why but I swear I was cursed. McGonagall actually started to get the shits with me, like."

"I remember," Dean murmured, turning into the Seamus' head and briefly closing his eyes. "You kept stealing mine."

"Mm. I definitely must have been cursed because yours all started snapping too, though it wasn't so bad 'cause I guess it pissed off Umbridge. Stupid cow, I swear, never met a more disagreeable witch in me life…"

After a time, Dean noticed that Susan and Hannah started to listen too. Long minutes of listening, of watching Seamus, and just slightly their expressions might have softened. Hannah even added her own contributions first, and that seemed to enable Susan to add a warble of her own.

"… can't believe he actually went and did that, like. Wayne's too nice of a person not to, though, I 'spose," Seamus said.

"Well, I heard Hagrid was pretty upset," Hannah said. "I would have gone down with Wayne to apologise for not taking his class too if I'd known."

"Of course you would have," Susan said weakly, a smile faint but definitely present upon her lips. She was leaning more heavily into Hannah's side and, eyes closed as they were, Dean hadn't been sure if she was even still awake. There were several dotted around the hall in similar exhaustion, though watching them detachedly as he was, Dean saw that none were truly sleeping, or at least not for long. They were all too on edge for that.

"Too nice, the both of you," Seamus said, sighing into Dean's should. Even the feel of his warm breath through Dean's shirt was oddly soothing. "Thank Merlin you're a bit more of a bitch, Susan, or else I'd have started to question my sanity, like."

"You mean you don't already?" Susan murmured, entirely disregarding the criticism.

Seamus hummed with the barest touch of amusement. "'Course I do. I was the only one who wanted to go up and look in the Shrieking Shack after all, like. Bunch of pansies, the lot of you. I can't believe we didn't go…"

On and on it went. Dean didn't know how Seamus managed it, to keep talking of absolutely nothing. Of recalling their shared past, though nothing painful, nothing of struggle or sadness, as though he unconsciously filtered his recollections. Or maybe it was conscious, Dean pondered, recalling Luna's words of how Seamus was just as important to them all as Neville, or Parvati or Susan because he 'made them laugh'. Maybe his endless, wistful talking was just that? Entirely intentional.

Dean had drawn his gaze towards Ron and Hermione across the room, staring absently at the two of them curled around one another much as he was around Seamus, and felt almost peaceful in spite of everything – until that peace was shattered. Entirely, completely, resolutely shattered. The end of their stasis arose as a now-familiar, sibilantly hissing voice.

It was raised in a triumphant, booming shout this time, however, and it was that as much as anything that provoked terror from Dean's heart. "Harry Potter is dead! He was killed as he ran away, trying to save himself while you lay down your lives for him. We bring you his body as proof that your hero is lost."

Dean felt his breath still. No, more than that, he couldn't breath at all. Frozen, his hand bunched in Seamus shirt where he clung to him, he stared blankly across the room. He saw the moment that Ron and Hermione fully registered what they'd heard, what it meant. He saw their own faces pale further in their wanness and horror flood their expressions.

"The battle is won," the voice continued, crowing in triumph. "You have lost half of your fighters. My Death Eaters outnumber you, and the Boy Who Lived is finished. There must be no more war. Anyone who continues to resist, man, woman or child, will be slaughtered, as will every member of their family. Come out of the castle, now. Kneel before me and you shall be spared. Your parents and children, your brothers and sisters, will live and be forgiven, and you will join me in the new world we shall build together."

The words echoed after they had stopped, ringing in Dean's ears. _Parents… sisters…_ Despite it all, despite what he knew and what he told himself, Dean couldn't disregard the suggestion. That his family would be safe, that… that the war was over? Impossible. That Harry was dead?

"Bullshit," Seamus said at his side, his voice hollow yet disbelieving. "Complete bullshit."

Dean didn't know what he was referring to exactly. He didn't know what part of it Seamus objected to. Glancing down towards him, Dean got a second to see Seamus' face, so pale he looked like he was going to pass out, before he was scrambling to his feet.

He wasn't the only one. Though silent but for scant whispers and sharp gasps, not a single person in the Great Hall that was still able to climb to their feet didn't. Dean found himself rising, starting from the Hall with the desperate need to see that _it_ _wasn't so_ , and caught up in the tide of clamouring bodies that spilled from the ruddy glow of the Entrance Hall into the darkness of night beyond.

The Death Eaters spread before them across the courtyard in a forbidding line of black robes, smears of shadow amidst more shadow. At their very centre, Voldemort himself stood, tall and pale as an egg. His snake-like face and glowing red eyes were visible even across the distance before him and his pale wand dangled from casually lax fingers. Dean had never seen him before but he knew with a cold certainty who he was. And behind him, cradled in the beaten arms of a sobbing Hagrid, was –

"NO!"

McGonagall's voice, surprisingly close to Dean's ear, nearly rocked him from his feet. It was heartbroken, devastated and utterly despairing. Dean had never thought to hear such a sound from her before, would never have expected it. Except that it embodied his own feelings perfectly. Limp and close-eyed, Harry lay in Hagrid's arms, the picture of death.

The war… was over? At the sight of Harry like that, it felt very much so. Their struggles, all their efforts, all they'd been fighting for and running for and lost thus far – it was over?

Dean felt something inside him die at that.

"No," Seamus whispered at his side just as his hand found and grasped Dean's. "No, that's not – it's not true, it's not… he can't be… we haven't…"

Around them, the rest of the survivors flooded the courtyard and an echo of gasps sounded around them. Cries tore through the air, forlorn and as devastated as McGonagall's. Dean heard Ron and Hermione, Ginny louder than them all and her voice wrought with anguish. Dean couldn't draw his gaze from Harry, because was this it? He couldn't even feel sorrow for his friend because of what it meant that he was _gone_.

"It's not over," Dean found himself murmuring, more a plea than with any real confidence. "It can't be, it's not –"

"SILENCE!"

Voldemort's booming voice clapped across the courtyard and, wand raised to loose a bang of emphasis, the silencing effect of magic was complete. Dean felt a weight clog his throat that he knew would charm a clasp onto his vocal cords.

Voldemort gestured to Hagrid over his shoulder, then at his feet with his wand. "Set him down, Hagrid, at my feet where he belongs."

It was a horrible sight, Harry lolling limply as Hagrid staggered forwards and gently lowered him to the ground. Dean couldn't draw his eyes from him even as Voldemort continued. "You see?" he said in mocking query. "Harry Potter is dead. Do you understand now, deluded ones? He was nothing, ever, but a boy who relied on others to sacrifice themselves for him."

Dean wanted to object to that, because that wasn't _Harry_ , and despite Voldemort and his looming, overwhelming triumph, Dean couldn't stand for that. But Ron beat him too it and, with a snap of the Silencing Charm, Dean somehow found his voice too. "He beat you!" Ron yelled, and Dean instantly felt himself bellow his agreement. At his side, Seamus shouted just as fiercely.

Voldemort sneered, an expression that only further twisted his unnatural features. "He was killed while trying to sneak out of the castle grounds, killed while trying to save himself –"

Somewhere, from their midst of onlookers, Neville flung himself forth. Dean barely caught a glimpse of him making a break across the courtyard, saw his face wrought into with pained determination. Then Voldemort snapped his wand towards him and blasted him from his feet with a vibrant flash that illuminated the night. Neville was thrown to the ground with a grunt, his wand flying from his hand towards Voldemort, and tumbled in a roll for several steps before falling still.

Dean felt himself flinch, just as the rest of the watching audience did. Seamus, still clasping onto Dean's wrist, even took a jerking step forward, his grasp tightening painfully.

Voldemort, in such a careless display that Dean couldn't help but grind his teeth despite his fear, casually inspected Neville's wand before tossing it aside. He contemplated Neville like a predator would its prey. "And who is this?" he said, the hiss of his words nothing if not reminiscent of the giant of a snake coiled just behind him amidst the Death Eaters. "Who volunteered to demonstrate what happens to those who continue to fight when the battle is lost?"

There was barely a pause before one of Voldemort's Death Eaters, a crazed woman with wild eyes and a manic smile that Dean vaguely recognised as being Bellatrix Lestrange, cackled maniacally. "It is Neville Longbottom, my Lord! The boy who has been giving the Carrows so much trouble! The son of the Aurors, remember?"

Dean felt Seamus' hand squeeze his wrist once more as Voldemort sighed, a terrifying smile spreading upon his lipless mouth. "Ah, yes, I remember." He clicked his tongue, watching as Neville struggled to his feet. Silence pervaded the breathless audience. Dean wanted nothing more than to step to his side, but couldn't make himself move. Neville looked very alone standing where he was before them all.

"But you're a pureblood aren't you, my brave boy?" Voldermort asked.

The question set Dean's teeth on edge. Purebloods, half-bloods, Muggleborns. All of it was so ludicrous and yet _this_ was what the war was being fought for? For blood purity and one man's insane lust for power?

The tightening in Neville's shoulders said he thought much the same as Dean. "So what if I am?" he called loudly.

Voldemort clicked his tongue once more. "You show spirit and bravery, and you come of noble stock. You will make a very valuable Death Eater. We need your kind, Neville Longbottom."

"Noble stock… what a fucking joke," Seamus murmured at Dean's side. Dean saw his eyes narrow and understood for a moment what went through his head. Noble? Many people would call Seamus' family just that, if not Seamus himself because his Muggle father. The derision was as much self-directed as externalised.

Neville, in a moment of sharp satisfaction on Dean's part, all but spat his reply. "I'll join you when hell freezes over. Dumbledore's Army!"

His bellow was met by a chorus of supportive cheers from his audience, and Dean didn't even realise he was cheering alongside them until Seamus, still clasping his wrist, raised both of their hands in the air in a demonstration of the camaraderie of their forces. They were far from alone in their support.

Dean saw Voldemort's lip twist before his voice sliced through their cries. "Very well. If that is your choice, Longbottom, we revert back to the original plan. On your head be it."

It was unclear what was happening for a second as Voldemort waved his wand and cast a silent spell. Dean tensed, unsure of what to expect, until a shattering of glass drew every gaze over their shoulder. A dark shape soared through the sky, barely visible in the poor light spilling from the Entrance Hall, and only revealed itself to be the Sorting Hat when it landed in Voldemort's hand. He held it, visibly disgusted, as though it were a fistful of offal.

"There will be no more Sorting at Hogwarts School. There will be no more houses. The emblem, shield and colours of my noble ancestor, Salazar Slytherin, will suffice for everyone, won't they, Neville Longbottom?"

Dean didn't even get the chance to feel affronted for that fact, for his anger to break through the tentative resolution that had all but overwhelmed his fear. Voldemort slashed his wand once more and Neville snapped to rigid attention, utterly still, before with another swipe Voldemort charmed the Hat onto Neville's head. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong, and though Dean didn't know what, he took a step forward to stop it.

Only for every Death Eater to level their wands at the similarly shifting crowd to still them in approach. Voldemort, standing before them all, raised his wand once more. His cruel smile twisted upon his face. "Neville here is now going to demonstrate what happens to anyone foolish enough to continue to oppose me," he declared.

And then Neville burst into flame.

Everything happened at once after that. Dean found himself lurching forwards in the desperate need to do something – _anything_ – at the sight of Neville burning despite the Death Eaters, though that might have been Seamus dragging him across the courtyard after him. He heard the screams of horror and rage, but that only for a moment. For over the top of that, thundering like oncoming storm clouds, came the stampede.

Centaurs flooded through the night, bowstrings _twang_ ing and ploughing up the hill to burst through the Death Eaters lining the courtyard. Overhead, dark, skeletal flying horses Dean had never seen before dove and struck with kicking hooves. Something that looked like a hippogriff screeched as it plummeted alongside them, cruel talons raking. And charging through them all, a single giant smashed, bellowing something unintelligible and swinging his tree-trunk arms.

Chaos reigned. Something even more than the Battle that had been an hour before because there was no even vaguely controlled fighting involved. Those watching, Dean's fellow fighters, were cast into a flurry of motion, scrambling from the courtyard to escape being crushed. Screams filled the air and it was all Dean could do to maintain his grasp on Seamus as they were swept not forwards but back in the direction of the Great Hall. He couldn't see Neville, even as he glanced over his shoulder in his direction. He couldn't see a hint of flames at all despite that they must have been vibrant through the night. Dean barely had a second to hope he was alright.

It was as though someone had opened Pandora's Box, yet what spilled forth wasn't evils for _them_ but for the Death Eaters that were herded alongside them. The centaurs crashed through the Entrance Hall, hooves clattering, and one that Dean thought might have been their old Divination teacher Firenze nearly trampled him. He lost hold of Seamus at that, tumbling to the floor as he dodged.

That was the moment that Dean experienced true terror. He didn't know what was happening, could barely extract his stolen wand from his pocket, and he couldn't see Seamus. Bodies rolled into one another everywhere, a mess of limbs and scrambling feet. House elves, for whatever reason, scrambled around him as he fought to regain his feet, wielding kitchen knives and even a few forks and spits like a vengeful village mob. Flashes of light as spells were fired soared around him, the crackle of magic in its wake, and everywhere bodies crashed into one another and scrambled to flee further into the perceived safety of the castle. The Death Eaters charged after them with their own wands waving, loosing curse after curse. They attacked mercilessly, even with the surprising threat of the new arrivals.

And Voldemort. Voldemort followed with his own raging flurry of spells. As Dean finally regained his footing, he saw the man himself in a whirlwind of dark robes. He struck with lashing curses like a creature of rage and fury itself, targeting figure after figure that were blasted as soon as he struck them. Dean saw Seamus and he saw –

He saw the second Voldemort turned towards him. Saw his eyes sweep over Seamus where he was hauling Hannah back to her feet and stumbling backwards away from the threat that loomed before them. Dean barely had time to utter a wordless cry before Voldemort, in his careless attacks, struck.

Only for the spell to rebound off a shield cast from nowhere. Dean didn't care at the luck or the intention of some nameless caster. He was lunging towards Seamus, forcing his way through the crowd of bodies as he did, and latching onto him desperately. Seamus barely spared him a wide-eyed glance that faded briefly into a relieved, inaudible gasp muffled beneath their raucous surrounds, before they were staggering for the Great Hall once more.

Dean cast spells. He cast curses and counter-curses with his poor excuse for a wand, erected shields to stave off the Death Eater attacks. He saw the familiar faces of students and professors and Order members ducking and diving between attacks, heard the screams of those struck and smelt the singed pungency of burned clothes and – and _meat_.

Everything was a blur, and Dean could barely discern up from down. At his side, Seamus cast with the same desperate urgency as he, Hannah just a little from him struggling to clasp a hand over a wound that dribbled blood from her temple. She disappeared in a moment that Dean glanced away from her, and that disappearance was almost more terrifying than seeing her fall.

There seemed no end to the flurry of duels and the battles raging as one and yet independently. Dean saw Voldemort in the midst of a battle between McGonagall, Slughorn and a tall, dark and imposing man that had to be an Order member. He heard more than saw the madness of Bellatrix Lestrange, cackling as she fought, and could only hope that whoever she targeted had support.

Dean found himself back to back with Seamus, fighting madly against an unfamiliar woman of plain face but for the snarl upon her thin lips, twisted as much as her broken nose. He fought with everything he had, and he might have even been able to beat her, too.

Except that from nowhere, he was struck with the force of a colliding semi-trailer. Straight to his head, it snapped him from his feet and Dean crashed to the ground with a grunt. He was immediately blinded, stunned in stupefaction for a moment, until the pain struck and he could hardly think for the pounding, intensely sharp throbbing in his head. He felt his fingers unlock from his stolen wand as they scrambled at the ground and a cry of pain that might have been his own overwhelmed every other sound.

He heard Seamus call his name. He felt a wash of intense heat and had barely a hazy second to wonder if Seamus had cast another explosion. Then his head dropped to the ground and nothing else mattered. Dean couldn't remember anything after that.

* * *

The battle was fought. It was fought hard.

Until it stopped. Such tended to happen when a dead hero rose from their apparent death to face their foe once more.

The entirety of the Great Hall, Death Eaters and the resisting in kind, were frozen. They watched, unable too look away as Harry Potter faced Voldemort in what they knew, _knew,_ would be the last battle of all. No one quite understood what was said in their exchange. No one except perhaps Harry Potter and Voldemort themselves.

And then it was over. In a fierce, split second fight, a Disarming Charm striking the Killing Curse, it was over. There was a beat longer, a second in which every single person lining the walls of the Great Hall stood in stunned disbelief. They stared at Harry Potter, at Voldemort crumpled across from him.

Then the Hall erupted into deafening screams.

Ecstasy reigned. Despite it all, despite what they'd lost, _who_ they'd lost, they had won this moment and for but a minute they could forget everything else. Not a single person, student, professor or otherwise, didn't raise their voices in celebration of their victory. The Death Eaters stood in stunned disbelief in their midst. They didn't even try to fight.

Seamus cheered as well. Of course he did, because they had won. He cheered as he clung to Dean's limp body just as he saw so many others around the room supporting their friends, and he cried at the sudden, overwhelming rush of relief that tore through him.

"It's over," he shouted into Dean's ear, because that was the only way he could ever hear him through the bellows that surrounded them. "It's finally done."

Though Dean didn't stir from his unconsciousness, Seamus through he might have heard him anyway.

* * *

The Hospital Wing was no longer in the Hospital Wing. By unanimous agreement at the sheer necessity of the relocation, it had been moved to the Great Hall.

The Hall itself was a disastrous mess of broken walls and scorched floors, riddled with so many people that it was almost a struggle to fit them in. Only people, that was, for the centaurs and what Seamus had come to understand were thestrals had retreated to where they'd come from. Seamus was grateful for that at least. The centaurs were one thing, but thestrals? He hated to think about what it meant that he could see them now. Not a single person in the Hall couldn't.

There was still sadness. There was still grief as families and friends stood alongside the fallen. There were still cries of pain from the wounded being treated, and murmured attempts at comfort that really weren't all that comforting.

And yet despite all of that and the endless mourning that would come, there was a lightness to the survivors. When the Death Eaters had been wrapped in magical fastenings, when the traces of Voldemort had been swept from the room, there was relief left in its place. Because it _was_ over. It was finally done – or at least the fighting was. Seamus hadn't realised how exhausted he was until he was assured of that liberty.

He was. He was so, so tired. Seamus was done with fighting, with struggling to be strong as much for himself as for the younger years that looked up to him and relied upon him to be just that. He was sick of enduring the pain the Carrows inflicted with increased intensity over the months. He was just done.

He couldn't have reached the end of his tether at a better time.

Sitting cross-legged with his back against the wall, Seamus propped one elbow on his knee and leaned heavily on his upraised hand as he observed the Great Hall. He saw Susan finally sitting next to Parvati, Parvati herself a mess of tears and hanging off of her. Susan actually shed a tear or too, though it seemed as much from exhaustion as grief. He saw Hannah a little ways away, still helping Madam Pomfrey even hours after most of what could be done by way of Healing had been. Michael Corner followed at her side and though he dragged his feet he didn't seem inclined to cease his efforts either.

Neville was sitting alongside Luna, the sword that he'd apparently killed Voldemort's snake with resting at his side. A clutch of other students surrounded him, and they actually spoke with animation, regardless of the heaviness of eyes and the sagging of weary shoulders. They were _happy._

Seamus saw McGonagall across the room talking to that Shacklebolt bloke. Flitwick had a horde of first years around him that still towered over him and were following at his beck and call like a team of ducklings. He saw Slughorn squatting on one of the benches, idly conversing with a couple of Slytherins who had slunk uneasily from their dungeons after the fight. Seamus didn't feel any anger at seeing those of the house who had been so against him for an entire year. He didn't feel much of anything anymore besides relief.

Well, relief and just a hint of concern as he turned back to where Dean lay at his side.

Dean had been out cold since he'd been struck in the head, collapsing to the ground before Seamus had even realised he'd been hit. For a brief, heart-stopping moment, Seamus thought he was dead. That was when he exploded, wiping out both the Death Eater he'd been fighting himself and the one who'd struck Dean. After that, Seamus hadn't really been able to fight. He could only stand over Dean and protect him because nothing else seemed quite so important as that.

Hannah had been the one to patch Dean up. She'd been visibly terrified as she'd hastened to Seamus' side, until she got her hands on Dean and assured Seamus that he was alright. Which he was, apparently. A blow to the head, one which he would likely still be feeling a few days after he woke up alongside a rather painful headache and intermittent dizziness, but he was alright.

"He is, Seamus," Hannah had assured him when he'd apparently continued to appear dubious. "He'll be alright. He'll probably wake up in a few hours, even."

Seamus had believed her. He'd had to, even though staring down at where Dean lay prone and unmoving, his face just a little too pale and eyes firmly closed, it was hard to entirely believe it. Seamus had grasped Dean's hand as soon as he'd sat down, placed it deliberately in his own lap, and set himself to wait until Dean woke up.

He was systematically biting his way through the fingernails of the hand not propping his chin, head bowed and listening detachedly to the surprisingly jovial sounds thrumming through the Great Hall, when the hand in his lap shifted. Seamus paused in his chewing, lifting his gaze just in time to see Dean shift into consciousness. He frowned as he struggled to awaken and then winced as he obviously felt the discomfort that Hannah had assured Seamus he would.

"I probably wouldn't move too much, like," Seamus said quietly. "You got your head smacked pretty hard."

At the sound of Seamus' voice, Dean stilled and, with evident struggle, blinked his eyes open. He squinted up at the ceiling for a moment, blinking rapidly in objection to the morning light that had been creeping tentatively into the room for over an hour, before dragging his gaze towards Seamus.

"Seam," he said with a croak and, foolishly, struggled to push himself up to sitting.

Seamus automatically reached forward and pressed his shoulder back to the bed of blankets beneath him. "Don't get up, idiot. You'll just fall over."

Dean blinked at him blearily, silently, as his eyes slowly cleared into clarity. He frowned again, glancing briefly and stiffly around the Great Hall before drawing his gaze back to Seamus. "What happened?"

Seamus fiddled with Dean's hand, linking their fingers absently as Dean curled his own into Seamus'. "We won," he said simply.

Dean blinked. "We won?"

"Yeah," Seamus said and, lifting his chin to meet Dean's eyes, he smiled. "We won."

It wasn't enough of an explanation, and Seamus knew it. Dean didn't have to demand the story; Seamus told it without being asked. Playing with Dean's hand as he spoke, he told him what had happened.

By the end of it, Dean was shaking his head in disbelief. "So Harry's not dead?"

Seamus shook his own head. "No. Apparently not."

Dean raised his free hand to his head before making another attempt to sit up. Seamus didn't say a word as he pressed him back down onto his blankets once more. With a slight grunt, Dean fastened his gaze upon Seamus once more. "This isn't another one of those things, is it?"

"What things?"

"Those Wizarding things that I don't understand because I was raised a Muggle until I was eleven." Dean scratched his head around the point on his forehead he'd been struck. Only the barest of discoloured bruises remained after Hannah's work. "People don't usually come back from the dead, do they?"

Seamus shook his head, smirking. "No, that doesn't usually happen."

"Usually?"

"Ever."

Dean sighed. "Is it a bad thing that I'm kind of relieved about that? To be honest, the whole zombie thing kind of creeps me out."

"Inferi," Seamus corrected. He at least knew what zombies were, though most of the Wizarding world were ignorant of the term. "And, ah… might not want to say stuff like that too loudly, like. Bad timing and all."

Dean appeared confused for a moment before understanding dawned and he winced. A quick glance around the room and he was frowning once more. "Yeah. Right. Seam, how many…?"

"Don't think about it," Seamus said. "Not now, anyway. Doesn't your head hurt?"

"Why do you keep saying that?" Dean said, even as he rubbed at his forehead once more. "Did someone tell you it would be?"

"Hannah. She said it definitely would, actually."

"I should've known," Dean said. He attempted a small smile as he twisted his hand in Seamus' grasp. "You know, it's going to suck having a doctor as a friend."

"Healer," Seamus said. "And two of them, actually."

"Parvati wants to stick at it too, huh?"

Seamus shrugged. "Most likely. She got pretty into it, like. You're not?"

"Not what?"

"Going to keep it up."

Dean looked contemplative for a moment before he smiled tiredly once more. "Maybe. Just in case though. I might need it, what with you trying to blow your head off most of the time and all."

"I don't do that anymore," Seamus muttered, only slightly indignant. Mostly he was just happy to see Dean smile, regardless of what kind of smile it was. Given the mood that hung suspended in the air throughout the Hall, he thought they needed that. "Actually, shut the hell up, I _never_ tried to do that intentionally."

Dean laughed. He actually laughed, though it was with a bit of a pained wince. Then he tried to sit up again.

Seamus wasn't having any of that. Pushing himself from the wall, he clambered onto his knees before bodily climbing on top of Dean to straddle his waist and pushing him firmly back down again. It perhaps wasn't quite necessary for him to so effectively pin him, but Seamus quite liked the feeling of lying so close to Dean, to feel his body warmth through the barrier of their clothes. He quite liked it a lot. And besides, Dean did appear to be regaining both strength and lucidity with each passing second.

Slumping back down with a grunt, Dean smirked up at Seamus before looping his hands casually around his waist. It was so casual, so comfortable, that they could have been as such for years rather than just sharing a summer together, and only sporadically at that. It was astounding to Seamus that Dean had only arrived back at the school that previous night. Had it really only been one night?

"That's unnecessary," Dean said.

"You complaining?" Seamus asked, prodding his chest.

Dean's arms tightened briefly. "No. Not at all. I just thought you might mind?"

He said it like a question and Seamus didn't have to ask what he was referring to. They talked about this. They'd spoken that previous summer, about how Seamus felt and that he'd felt it for so long now. That Dean truly and surely did feel the same way for him in return and that he was entirely comfortable with that fact. It might have been almost awkward at first – Dean had been Seamus' best friend for years, after all, and even knowing he liked him as he did it had been strange – but they'd quickly overcome that when Seamus had realised that awkwardness definitely took a back seat when faced with the overwhelming bliss of proffered warmth and physical affection. He'd been one to hug Dean first in the past, but that type of embrace was different.

Seamus had always been the one with the problem with his sexuality. Or at least he had been in the past, for it was definitely something he thought he'd grown to accept. More than that, however, in the greater scheme of things, when he was contemplating their survival and the possibility of never seeing Dean again, the painfully jabbing burr of his family's acceptance and what others thought of him seemed almost negligible. What was other's opinion in the face of what he shared with Dean?

Shrugging, Seamus slumped forward so that he was lying on Dean's chest, resting his head on his shoulder. He managed to slide his fingers around Dean's waist with no mind as to Dean's personal discomfort, though Dean didn't appear to be experiencing any anyway. He was warm, his heartbeat strong and loud, and the feel of him was a strange mixture of hard and soft that Seamus would be quite happy to never let go of again.

"No," he said. "I don't mind at all."

Dean only hummed in reply. When Seamus glanced up towards him, he saw a smile touching his lips and his gaze resting upon Seamus. Seamus had never really contemplated what it would be like to be loved wholeheartedly, but seeing that expression in Dean's eyes he thought he might grow to understand it.

The Great Hall did shift and change after a time. It was with the arrival of breakfast that it did, a flood of house elves that had somehow managed to prepare a finger-food feast despite the fact that the battle for the Wizarding World had been raging barely hours beforehand barely a few corridors from the kitchens. Seamus finally dragged himself off of Dean, rolling to his feet and helping Dean to wobble to his own to make their way to the cleared area in the centre of the floor. Ragged sheets served as picnic mats and most of the survivors were already sitting.

Seamus found them a seat amongst their old year group, right alongside Susan who was still wrapped firmly in Parvati's embrace and appeared to be having a little difficulty reaching for any of the pastries and sandwiches on offer because of it. Not that she was complaining, mind. Hannah sat at her side, finally relieved of her duties with Pomfrey and in animated discussion with Michael. Seamus saw Ernie alongside Terry, who slumped casually against Padma as she talked to Anthony Goldstein. Across their lopsided circle, Harry sat wedged between Ginny and Ron, Hermione at Ron's side and Neville beside her. It was almost strange to see Harry like that. He looked too normal. Not like he'd just defeated one of the most powerful Dark wizards the world has ever seen. He just looked like Harry.

"What do you want?" Seamus asked amidst the overloud chatter of teenagers filling their bellies, helping Dean to lower himself the ground. "Sorry, but I don't think they have any tuna sandwiches, like."

Dean snorted, rolling his eyes at Seamus. "Would you please drop the tuna-teasing? That was _one time_ I said I loved Hogwarts' tuna sandwiches. I don't think I've actually eaten it since about fourth year and I don't even like fish that much."

"Don't you mean tuna-baiting?" Seamus said with a grin, reaching for a sausage roll and handing it to Dean.

"Not that I don't appreciate the puns, Seamus, but would you please refrain?" Susan asked with a small smile.

"Well, since you asked so nicely, like, Susan." Seamus said, taking a bite of his own sausage roll.

"How are you feeling, Dean?" Ginny asked from across the circle, drawing the eyes of most of their friends. "I didn't know you woke up already."

"It looked a little sore," Hermione said with a sympathetic wince before promptly disregarding her concern and taking a bite of her sandwich.

Dean shrugged. "It's alright. I think Hannah patched me up pretty perfectly. I hope for the world's sake you're going to keep going with your Healer training."

"Of course she is," Michael said from Hannah's side. "Right with me."

"Right with you," Susan sighed. "Wonderful."

"Susan, I don't know what your beef is with me –"

"Oh, I don't have a beef, Michael, I only…"

"Make sure you take it easy, then," Hermione said, speaking over the top of Susan as she distracted herself with Michael. Her pointed stare at Dean questioned the fact that he was up at all. "You don't want to hurt yourself by accident."

 _Always bossy,_ Seamus couldn't help but think, drawing his gaze temporarily from where he was trying _very hard_ not to stare at Harry towards Hermione instead. He looped a casual arm around Dean's neck, dropping his head onto his shoulder as though it was the most comfortable thing to do in the world.

"It's alright, Hermione. I'll be sure to knock him down if he gets too energetic, like."

"I'm sure you would," Dean said with a smirk, looping his own arm around Seamus'.

Because Seamus couldn't look away for long, magnetised as his eyes were, he saw the curiosity in both Harry's and Ron's expression as they regarded them. Ron raised a finger before him, frowning. He opened his mouth for a second, closed it, then reattempted. "Wait a second. Seamus. Dean. Are you two an item now?"

Seamus felt eyes turn towards them. Some – Harry, Ron and Hermione in particular – were curious while others – namely Susan, Hannah and Parvati – were expectant. Seamus opened his mouth to reply, but before he could reply Dean spoke for him. "Yeah, something like that. It's coming up to a year now, isn't it, babe?"

It was a tease, Seamus knew. Dean never had, and likely never would again, call him such a pet name, but in that moment Seamus found it hilarious. He grinned up at Dean before curling a hand around the back of his neck. "Yeah, I'd say about that." Then he dragged Dean towards him and drew him into a deep and utterly demonstrative kiss. It wasn't what he'd intended, but Seamus quite lost himself in the soft warmth of Dean's mouth, the taste of pastry and the whisper of warm breath on his lips when they drew apart.

Seamus didn't care at that moment what anyone else though of him. For once, he didn't care at all. From the sound of Ron's, "Well, I feel like an idiot for not seeing that coming," Harry's, "Don't worry, I think I was just as oblivious" and Susan's exasperated, "You finally bloody admitted it," it sounded like he didn't need to.

Seamus smiled up at Dean as they finally drew apart and Dean grinned right back. His face practically glowed for the expression, breaking through his lingering weariness.

What had happened that previous night was a tragedy. A disaster of epic proportions, and Seamus knew that it would take a long time, years even, if ever, for them to recover. Voldemort had torn a scar into the world, a spilt a stain that might never be removed.

But, Seamus thought, at least some things endured. As he wrapped his arms back around Dean, he was certain of the fact that not even a war could tear them apart. Now he even had the evidence to prove it.

* * *

A/N: I'm not done with you yet, my dear readers. I'll see you next week for the last chapter. Thanks for reading!


	19. Chapter 19 - Epilogue

A/N: Last chapter, everyone!

Just as a WARNING: this chapter contains sexual references and depictions of PTSD. A happy ending, perhaps, but bittersweet, I think. If you feel that such references could be triggering, please read carefully or not at all. Thanks.

* * *

 **Chapter 19: Epilogue**

"… that we really don't mind if you want to. You know that your old room will always be there. You know both you and Seamus are welcome at any time."

Dean smiled into the phone, the mobile one he'd gotten for the very purpose of calling home because Eoghan, though half-blood and son of a Muggle that he was, didn't have one at his place. He would admit to enjoying the freedom of being able to call his mum, Andrew and his sisters whenever he wanted to. Whenever he needed to.

"Thanks, Mum," he said. "But it's fine. Eoghan said he's fine with us just staying here for as long as we want. We were hoping to move into our own place sometime, though."

"Your own place?" His mum sounded surprised but still slightly pleased. "Well, that's a big step. Are you sure you could afford something, the both of you?"

Dean shrugged, leaning back against the kitchen counter. Eoghan's house was relatively small, the kitchen contained and cluttered with appliances, and the fridge splattered with notes pegged beneath magnets. It was familiar now, had become so after months of living in it. It almost, _almost_ felt like home.

"We should be fine," Dean said. "Seamus is pretty steady with his work and I've got that interview for at the gallery that's looking pretty promising. We were thinking of just leaving it till we were more sure what was happening with all that."

"Oh, but that's wonderful! How exciting! Would you like Andrew and I to come and have a look around with you?"

Dean almost blurted out an abrupt "No!" but managed to bite his tongue at the last second. It wasn't that he didn't appreciate the offer, because he did. It wasn't that he didn't want to see his parents either, because he loved seeing them and made the effort to visit every other day. It was simply because he and Seamus had agreed that they wanted to do it themselves, entirely themselves, and it might have been foolish to think so but Dean quite liked the independence of doing just that.

Since the Battle of Hogwarts as it had now been formally dubbed, Dean had been thriving on the independence. Or perhaps isolation was a better term for it. He hadn't quite been able to grow accustomed to the presence of so many people around him after months of time with barely a handful. With the exception of Seamus, of his few friends that he kept in contact with from school and Eoghan who had readily welcomed him into his home, everyone seemed just too much.

Dean didn't want to go back to Hogwarts. He didn't want to go back to a place he hadn't attended for nearly a whole year, to complete an education he didn't really need and to step the corridors of a place he'd seen so much that still plagued his nightmares with horrifying memories. Seamus hadn't either, had actually been muted in his translation of his feelings on the matter when he'd admitted them to Dean, and Dean was more than happy for the both of them to put the school behind them.

Hogwarts held some good memories for them both, held _many_ good memories, but right them the bad outweighed the good too heavily. It just felt too soon.

So they moved in with Eoghan. It was an escape of sorts, because Eoghan lived about as far away from Hogwarts as they could get while still living in Britain. Dean liked Eoghan, had come to like him more since he'd started living with him, and was only inclined to move out because he felt the urge to get his own space. A space he could share with Seamus because, as they'd decided, where one of them went the other would definitely follow.

The war had been a solid blow to them all. In many ways, Dean knew he hadn't recovered from what had happened. He knew, and not only from Seamus commenting on the fact, that he spoke less than he had, that he felt the urge to see his family more – if only ever briefly – like a compulsive urge simply because he could. That at times he lost himself in his drawing and painting and few things could drag him out of it.

Seamus was one of those things. Always Seamus. Not only because of his own encouragement either, but because Dean knew that Seamus needed him as well. They had both changed, both faced their own struggles, but it was somehow easier when there was the support of another to help them through it.

Not too much support, however. Which was just another reason that Dean didn't particularly want his mum coming with them when they went shopping for houses. He needed – quite honestly needed – to see his family at times, but for whatever reason, Dean similarly felt the need to be away from them. It was a confounding situation that he still couldn't quite wrap his head around.

"Thanks, Mum, but it's alright," Dean said, adjusting the phone on his ear. "We might call in for a second opinion when we've narrowed down what we're looking. If you and Dad could help, that would be great."

"Of course," his mum replied, her voice a little grainy through the phone. He could hear the understanding in her tone nonetheless, however. "You know where to find us if you need us."

"For sure, Mum. Thanks."

A scuffle behind him was the only warning Dean got before a pair of arms wrapped around him and a chin dropped onto his shoulder. "Hi, Julie! How've you been? I haven't seen you in a whole week, like. Mind if I come for a visit some time?"

Seamus' voice was overloud in Dean's ear and clearly audible enough for his mum to hear him. As Dean turned to glance at Seamus on his shoulder, meeting him grin for grin, he heard his mum laugh. "That wouldn't happen to be Seamus, would it?"

"How'd you guess?" Dean asked, turning back away from Seamus who, he saw, had bodily climbed on the counter behind him to so enwrap him.

"Well, you can tell him he's welcome whenever he'd like to visit."

"Mum says whenever you'd like," Dean transferred to Seamus.

"Brilliant!" Seamus replied easily. Then, overloudly again, "Can you give me a call when Andrew cooks up another batch of muffins, Julie?"

"I knew there was an underlying reason for the request," Dean's mum laughed. Dean found himself chuckling alongside her.

As Seamus unlocked his arms from around Dean and clambered off the counter and into the kitchen, Dean exchanged a few more words with his mum before hanging up. Seamus was crouched before the open fridge and peering contemplatively inside when he set down his phone.

"Hungry?" Dean asked. "I was going to make dinner soon. Want to help?"

"Hm," Seamus hummed, wrapping an arm around his belly. "Don't think I can be bothered, like. Want to eat out?"

"Sure, whatever you'd like." Folding his arms and leaning back against the counter, Dean watched as Seamus straightened and made his way from the kitchen, drifting down the hallway. "How was work?"

"Ah…" Seamus replied, calling back after himself. "Yeah, whatever. Same old same old."

"That doesn't sound all that exciting," Dean said, crossing to the kettle and filling it absently. "Don't tell me you're getting bored of making fireworks already."

"Not hardly," Seamus replied. "No, it was just… there was this bloke, right. Complete tosser who thinks he knows everything. Well, he had an order placed _supposedly_ , but Tyke and me couldn't find anything on it, like, and you know orders only come through Tyke and me, so we were talking to this bloke and he was getting more and more angry, which was complete bullshit because he had _no_ reason to get angry…"

Dean listened with half an ear as he set out two cups for tea. He liked listening to Seamus talk, had always liked it even if he was only a listener and not an active participant himself. Sometimes he liked it more that way. It was soothing.

Except that, as Seamus chattered and drifted first from the 'tosser bloke' to a description of someone he swore, "Looks like Sue Li from school, you remember, but swore she wasn't" and then onto lunch and a somewhat in-depth conversation he'd had with his manager Tyke, Dean knew there was something wrong. Frowning, he flicked the kettle off and took himself down the narrow hallway towards the room he and Seamus shared.

Seamus was sitting on the bed, bent double and absently plucking his shoelaces undone. He'd already discarded one shoe and looked nothing if not at ease as he worked slowly on the other. Except for the fact that Dean knew something was wrong. He'd come to know, just as he knew Seamus knew that when he was too quiet for too long he was thinking, or when he lost himself in his drawing he needed to be pulled out of it sometimes. Dean knew that when Seamus talked like that – his 'too much but entirely trivial' talking – that something was wrong.

"… but Tyke says he's never been before, so I don't know, like, maybe he did live under a rock for the first thirty years of his life –"

"Seam?" Dean interrupted quietly.

"- but I promised that I'd take him so – what?" Seamus glanced up at Dean, apparently unaware that he'd even entered the room. He spared Dean a smile before turning back to his shoe. Even the way he did that was too slow for his normal upbeat pace. "What's up?"

"Seamus, what's wrong?"

Seamus paused, fingers stilling on his laces, before slowly straightening. He stared up at Dean blankly, the hand he still had draped casually around his stomach locking fingers into his shirt. "What?"

Dean crossed the room. He might not be the most perceptive person in the world, but he knew Seamus. Dropping onto the bed, Dean studied Seamus for a moment before slowly reaching for the arm he held to himself.

Seamus didn't pull away from him, but Dean saw the sudden wariness in his eyes and knew he'd been right. Turning his gaze down to Seamus' hand, he carefully turned it over and had to fight not to frown. He pressed his lips together for a moment as he stared at the fringes of a ruddy burn that marred Seamus' wrist.

"What happened?"

One of the best things about Seamus, about Dean's relationship with him, was that they didn't keep secrets from one another. Not really. Not anymore. When Dean asked, he knew that Seamus would answer, and not only because he likely suspected that Dean already knew what had happened.

Sighing, Seamus' shoulders slumped slightly. "Just an accident at work."

"An accident?" Dean asked, slowly and gently rolling up Seamus' jacket sleeve. He couldn't help but wince this time. The burn was large and spreading; though not exceptionally deep, it certainly looked painful. "Did you put something on it?"

Seamus shifted in his seat, and when Dean glanced back up at him it was to find his head bowed and gaze downcast. "I just ran it under water. It's fine."

"Seamus –"

"It's fine, Dean."

Dean knew it wasn't, and he suspected what might be the real problem. He had to ask anyway, though, even if he knew it would hurt to hear just as much as Seamus would struggle to say it. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Seamus bit his lip as his shoulders slumped further. He took a long moment to reply but when he did, as it always was with Seamus, it came out in a sudden rush. "I just wasn't looking at what I was doing. Just zoning out, like. Stupid, I was thinking about yesterday and I didn't think it bothered me but apparently it did, you know?"

Dean nodded. He'd thought about yesterday enough in the hours since to understand that. Seamus – and Dean, because as both boyfriend and moral support he was entitled to come along – had met up with his parents for dinner. It hadn't been bad, but it was never easy with Seamus' parents. Things had changed for the better with the war, but they were far from perfect. Dean didn't think he could ever forgive Seamus' parents for what they'd done, but he could accept that Seamus wanted to try to.

Cupping Seamus' arm gently, Dean tipped his head in an attempt to catch his eye. "Did it…? Seam, when you burned yourself, did it…?"

Seamus shook his head and his expression crumpled just a little. "No. I didn't feel it at all, like. I mean, it's mostly just a shallow burn but Tyke always says that those ones usually hurt the most."

That was it. Dean heard himself sigh before, ensuring he was careful of Seamus' burned arm, he wrapped his arms around him. So often he wished he'd had the chance to kill the Carrows for the punishments they'd inflicted not only upon Seamus but upon almost every student that had attended Hogwarts the previous year. Never more, however, when Seamus had one of his 'injury' moments.

They hadn't realised something was so wrong at first, but upon speaking with Susan and Hannah they'd found that the repeated bouts of torture curse had been anything but forgiving upon its victims. Seamus had said when Dean had first come across him in the Room of Requirement the previous year, in a confrontation that he'd never forget, how he could hardly even feel the bruises. Dean had taken it as stoicism, an attempt at bravery.

He hadn't realised it had been the truth.

Study into the effects of the curse, by Hannah in particular who had developed an inclination for Healing, had discovered that the abuse of nerve endings sometimes resulted in lasting effects. That sometimes – often, even – the victim's pain receptors were irreversibly damaged until they simply didn't feel with them anymore. It horrified Dean to realise, and he'd been almost unable to look at Seamus without sorrow for a whole week until Seamus had quite literally slapped him out of it.

"There's nothing we can do about it, like," Seamus had said, which was the truth as far as Hannah had been able to tell. "So quit worrying, would you?"

At first, Dean had thought that Seamus' inability to feel particular pains had been more concerning to himself than to Seamus. That had lasted until Seamus had nearly cut his hand off with a kitchen knife and started crying. Actually crying, as Dean had so rarely seen him do.

"Fuck, Dean," he'd sobbed, crumpling to the ground against the counter and looking resolutely away from his own arm as Dean patched it up as quickly as humanly and magically possible. "What the fuck do I do?"

It scared Seamus. As so many things still did from the war, it scared him. And Dean didn't know what to do about it. All he really _could_ do was Heal Seamus to the best of his ability and help him through it when he became nearly hysterical before the reality that sometimes, most of the time, he couldn't really feel pain at all.

It was for that reason that Dean asked Seamus as gently as possible when an incident arose. It was why, when Seamus finally drew away from his embrace slightly, Dean rose to his feet and urged him from the room. Pausing at the bathroom for the Burn Cream, Dean tugged Seamus into the living room where he sat obligingly. Dean dropped to the couch at his side and began lathering Seamus arm with gentle fingers.

Seamus watched him blankly, not protesting but clearly unhappy for the situation. Until, as he was want to do, he visibly thrust aside his unhappiness, sniffed, and even attempted a smile. "It's actually a real pain in the ass that it happened when it did, like. I was in the middle of trying something a little different."

"What was that?" Dean asked quietly.

"Well, it _used_ to be a Mexican Spitting Cracker until I started fiddling with it."

Dean allowed himself a small smile as he finished his ministrations, screwed the lid back on the pot of cream and glanced up at Seamus. "Should I be thanking this cracker for your burn, then?"

"Oi, don't take it out on the cracker, like," Seamus said, smile widening. It clearly took a bit of effort but he managed. "It's not its fault it sort of exploded."

"'Sort of exploded'," Dean echoed with an attempt at a chuckle. He slumped back into the couch, leaning into Seamus' shoulder. "You don't think your meddling might have agitated it some?"

"Not in the slightest. Crackers are usually very well behaved."

"I'm sure. Just like those – what were they, Dragon Bites? The ones you bought for last Christmas that almost burned the house down."

"Yeah, but those're Dragon Bites," Seamus said, as if it made a difference. "They're always temperamental."

Dean laughed again, allowing the incident to pass. It wasn't like reprimanding Seamus would be either necessary or well-received. Dean wasn't Seamus' mum, nor his designated caretaker. He was the boyfriend that supported the endeavours he loved so much and helped to pick him back up and put him on his feet again should those endeavours backfired. Just like Seamus did for him.

Besides, Seamus didn't need reprimanding. He had likely scolded himself enough as it was. Dean had long ago learned that, of all people, Seamus was one of the hardest upon himself.

They sat in silence for a long moment, simply sitting without talking as Seamus studied his arm and watched the Burn Cream work its magic. Dean studied Seamus in turn, idly picking at a piece of his fringe that had been charred from blond to black. Seamus often came home with such hairstyling additions. As expected, it was Seamus who broke the silence first.

"Dean?" he murmured.

"Yeah?"

"I don't really fancy going out for dinner tonight."

There was weight behind that brief admission, and Dean heard the unspoken words easily enough. He understood not wanted to see the world sometimes. Nodding, smiling a little sadly, Dean slung an arm around Seamus' shoulder. Seamus had always been shorter than him – quite a bit shorter than him, at that – but in Dean's opinion he was just the right height to draw into an embrace.

"Yeah. Me neither."

* * *

Waking at seven o'clock in the morning was a habit Seamus had possessed for as long as he could remember. Once, he might have thought it was a benefit; it meant that, getting up early, he could fit as much into his day as possible.

Now, it really was merely a habit. Sometimes Seamus wished he could sleep longer, for regardless of what time he fell into bed it would always be to awaken on the hour. Sometimes that was more of a curse than a blessing.

Not that day, however. That day, Seamus was glad he woke when he did.

Blinking into wakefulness, he squinted at the thin sliver of light filtering through a crack in the curtains draping the window a body's length from the bed. Though only a sliver, it somehow managed to effectively illuminate the room enough to see by. Yawning, Seamus blearily raised his head and dragged his gaze around him.

Their room. The room he and Dean shared. It wasn't even really a room, for that matter, because their house wasn't really a house. In typical frugal-graduate style, they'd moved into a rundown studio apartment, a loft perched atop a bakehouse that Seamus would admit wafted the most glorious scents through the thin floors. He hadn't eaten anything but Mr and Mrs Dame's bagels for breakfast since they'd moved in months before.

The loft wasn't big. It wasn't fancy and it lacked even the plasterboard walls to hide the plain, ruddy brick of the walls. Or it did on all walls but one, that Seamus and Dean had patched up for reasons they didn't feel the need to tell the Dames. The light fittings were dated, and in the summer that they'd just experienced proved their residence to be capable of insufferable heat. The Dames, being Muggles, didn't have Heating or Cooling Charms installed in the foundations, so Seamus and Dean had to it for themselves.

But it wasn't bad. It was far from bad. Seamus hadn't _needed_ to move out of Eoghan's house, but he was glad they had. He liked the little rundown loft, with its single room and open space, the simple kitchen just big enough for two and even the admittedly dingy bathroom that he used only when necessity absolutely dictated. He liked their lumpy bed – that Hannah had charmed into a modicum of greater comfort the first time she'd visited – and their antique dining table that had more scars than a war veteran. Their settee of mismatched couches that faced a modest television, because one of the best things about living in a Muggle property was the electrical wiring. Seamus could get used to that. He thought he already was.

He liked the wall of curtained windows looking out onto the narrow streets of Greenwich through which, if he squinted hard enough, he could see the River Thames in the distance. Muggle London was very different to the Wizarding world and, by and large, Seamus quite liked it that way. Seamus found he only ever felt the need to return at all for work or, on the odd occasion, to see his old friends. Muggle London was… in many ways it was liberating. For both he and Dean.

Scrubbing a hand across his eyes, Seamus glanced to the other half of the bed. He frowned at the sight of emptiness, the mussed sheets and abandoned pillow. Reaching a hand across the bed, he found the mattress cold. Dean had been up for a while, then.

Pushing himself upright, Seamus slung his legs from bed and rose to his feet. Months ago, both he and Dean had trouble sleeping. A lot of trouble, and those troubles sometimes still manifested as nightmares. Seamus had been surprised and then understanding when Dean had first shown and then explained how he struggled to sleep for more than a few hours at a time. A by-product of his alertness of the war, he'd called it.

That had changed. Mostly.

Seamus couldn't see Dean for a moment as he stumbled on sleepy legs the loft, feet padding on the thin wooden floors. He knew where he was, though. He knew and didn't even need to check before starting across the room. As Seamus approached the single plastered wall, he paused in step and just watched.

The wall was Dean's. It was the reason they'd asked the Dames if they could plaster it in the first place, though they hadn't told them _why_. The paintings that Dean streaked across the bareness was hastily veiled by magic when their landlords made their regulatory checks. Seamus was glad for that at least. Dean needed that wall. He needed somewhere vast and empty to draw when he… when he needed to.

Dean was sitting on the floor in the semi-darkness, cross-legged and hunched over the palette in his lap. A thin-tipped brush grazed the pale wall with slow, steady sweeps, leaving trails of colour in its wake. Dean himself was utterly focused, seeming almost not to breathe for his concentration. The barest of frowns touched his straight features, the shadows of the early morning darkening his eyes further beneath his strong brow. He made a sight, dressed in a thin tank just as Seamus was with slacks bunched up to his knees. The movement of Dean's arm as he drew his brush across the wall in slow arcs bunched the muscles in his biceps, shoulders visibly tightening as he paused for a moment, glanced further up the wall and, seemingly randomly, dabbed at another work as though he'd recalled he needed to finish something he'd forgotten.

Seamus could stare at Dean paint forever. It was hypnotic, and as such it was impossible not to see how Dean might at times lose the world to his art. At times he did just that. At times he wouldn't resurface until he was forcibly drawn from the depths of his mind, the clinging urges that demanded he paint and expel the built-up thoughts that clogged his brain.

It was an outlet, Seamus had realised. He'd known it detachedly long ago, perhaps for as long as he'd known Dean, but he truly understood it after the war. Dean had changed for what he'd been through, for his time as a fugitive, briefly as a prisoner and then as an amateur soldier on the war front. He didn't often talk about it, but Seamus knew. He could tell. Dean was quieter, though seemingly unintentionally. More introspective. Sometimes he would just stare, at his art, at Seamus himself, sometimes at nothing at all, and Seamus couldn't even begin to make out what he was thinking.

Sometimes his drawings were a benefit in that regard. Seamus might not be able to understand what Dean was thinking when he stared at him unreadably, but his art painted pictures that were sometimes discernible enough. Not always, but sometimes.

Stepping quietly to Dean's side – he didn't glance Seamus' way, and Seamus hadn't really expected him to – Seamus drew his gaze over the work. The entire wall wasn't even half covered, but there was a substantial corner growing like a starburst of darkness and colour, one that Seamus recognised as having spread substantially since the previous day. Dean must have had precious little sleep the night before to have painted so much.

He had a certain style to his work, one that Seamus had never truly noticed until he'd all but fallen into artistry after the war. There was a lot of darkness, a lot of shadows, and muffled forms that weren't quite discernible. Sometimes only the barest outline of a face could be made out, the shadow of a half-closed eyelid, the curve of a mouth in a smile or tip of an eyebrow in a frown. Not always faces either, but places, houses, stretches of road that lead to nowhere. Dean's wall was a collage of contrasting images that somehow fit perfectly together.

That day, it was faces. Seamus recognised some of them, most of them, and what he saw saddened him. He saw Lavender's face, frozen in the midst of a vibrant giggle. He saw the Creevey kid that neither of them had really known that well but Seamus _understood_ because like so many others he still saw his face. He saw two figures only vaguely recognisable from the papers that he knew to be Ted Tonks and Dirk Cresswell, the men who Dean had been on the run with for a time. Dean didn't talk about them much. Seamus didn't ask.

 _I guess I should have expected it_ , Seamus thought, crouching down at Dean's side. _It is the anniversary, after all_.

Dean was dabbing at a face, one barely half formed, when he paused. Seamus knew it wasn't because he was at his side, that Dean hadn't noticed him. Dean never noticed. He so rarely noticed anything when he was hyper-focused. But Seamus used the moment and, reaching for Dean's hand with slow, gentle fingers, his wrapped it in his own. A brief hold, a brief touch to begin to bring Dean back from wherever he'd been, and then Seamus just as gently pulled the brush from Dean's hand.

It was like a spell had been broken. Dean sighed heavily, shoulder slumping, and his eyes blinked rapidly as though they ached from staring for too long. They probably did, Seamus reasoned. He'd been awake for hours.

Then he turned towards Seamus. For a long moment he only stared, his gaze unblinking, and Seamus met it just as silently. He let Dean choose when to break it.

"Hey," Dean said finally, barely a murmur.

"Hi."

"Did I wake you? Sorry."

Seamus shook his head, smiling slightly. "What, with all of that furious painting? 'Cause you just paint so loud, like."

Dean cracked a minute smile at that, which Seamus took as a victory. He didn't expect much joviality that day, not from himself, from Dean, or from anyone else who had been _there_. Dean glanced down to where Seamus still held his hand. "Yeah. Sorry."

He didn't really mean it and Seamus knew he knew they were only teasing one another, but he shrugged anyway. "'S alright. It's time to wake up anyway."

"Is it seven already?"

"Yeah."

Dean glanced over his shoulder to the distant wall of curtained windows. He shook his head slightly. "I must have lost track of time."

Seamus nodded. "Yeah. That happens, like."

"Sorry."

"Why are you apologising?"

Turning back to Seamus, Dean opened his mouth to reply but paused for a moment. His brow crinkled as he shook his head. "I don't know."

Seamus did. Seamus knew that feeling exactly, and despite his words he knew Dean did as well. The anniversary of the end of the war provoked memories. Memories of battle, and death, and fighting. Seamus knew he couldn't have done anything more, realistically knew that he couldn't have fought any harder, but he still felt guilty at times. Like he _should_ have done more.

For once, Seamus didn't speak into Dean's silence. He knew that Dean liked to hear him talk and that he found it soothing. He'd told him just that – that he liked it when it was quiet, but he liked it more when Seamus just talked. About nothing and anything, but always only Seamus. Apparently, no one else quite tickled his fancy in that regard.

Seamus understood that, too. It was probably the same as how he found watching Dean's painting cathartic.

He didn't speak that day, however. Seamus didn't think any words would have been quite right for it. Instead, rising onto his knees, he turned into Dean, raised his free hand to the back of Dean's neck, and drew him towards him. He didn't ask, didn't speak further, before tugging him into a kiss.

Dean let himself be led. Sometimes, such simple release, simple actions, provided the greatest relief.

The palette from Dean's lap clattered to the floor as he turned towards Seamus himself, hand slipping around Seamus' waist to drag him into its place. Seamus straddled his legs, knees on either side of Dean's thighs, and, drawing his hands around Dean's head, sunk into Dean's mouth. The feeling of Dean's arms wrapped around him was warm, comfortable, and the smell of him flooded Seamus' senses. That same body warmth, but tinged with the sharp, chemical scent of his paints that Seamus had come to love so much simply because it reminded him of Dean.

They lost themselves in one another's lips, Seamus closing his eyes onto the gradually encroaching morning light and sinking into the heat of Dean's breath. He breathed in the taste of him as he curled his tongue into Dean's mouth. The soft sighs Dean released were their only accompaniment, and it was enough. To Seamus' ears, it would always be enough.

Seamus had all but wrapped himself around Dean, thoroughly lost in the feel of his body pressed against him and the warmth pooling in his belly, when Dean finally drew away. Seamus blinked his eyes open, staring down into Dean's as he gazed up at him in turn. His eyes were even darker than they had been before, despite the light that was rapidly spilling into the room.

His fingers drew up Seamus' spine as he sighed out a breath before speaking. In a quiet murmur, barely audible, he asked. "Can I have you?"

Seamus smiled. Always polite and courteous. Chivalrous even. That was Dean. Seamus had known it years ago when he'd watched with envy as Dean showered that consideration upon Ginny. It was different to the kind that he afforded to his friends. Different, and Seamus had been envious for it.

Not anymore. Never anymore, because Dean had told him time and time again – that he loved _him_ , that he wanted to be with _him_ , and those words were far greater than any kind of politeness could ever be.

Seamus nodded, pressing his lips briefly against Dean's once more. "Yeah. Yeah, of course. Always."

Once, it had been embarrassing. Once, when they'd both been so knew to their relationship, despite how Seamus had felt and _knew_ he'd felt for Dean, it had been terribly embarrassing. The tentative touches, however, the blushing hesitancy and awkwardness that he was with _Dean_ , his best friend of years, had gradually faded. Even more so when Seamus finally admitted what had been nagging at him since they'd first gotten together.

"I never slept with Wayne," he blurted out. He could feel himself blush hotly for admitting such a thing and hadn't been able to look at Dean where he sat beside. Seamus stared resolutely at his fingers as they picked at one another almost frantically.

Dean didn't reply for a moment. When he did, it was his definite uncertainty and something like incredulity. "You… you mean you never –?"

Seamus' cheeks felt on fire as he shook his head, briefly squeezing his eyes closed. "No, I mean, like – I mean we never… we never went the _whole way_ , you know?"

It felt wrong to admit such a thing to his best friend and boyfriend. Almost criminal, because he shouldn't be speaking of such things with _Dean_ , and not only because he didn't want to disrespect Wayne's privacy. Bringing up the past felt like a bad idea. But Seamus also felt like he had to say it, because it had hung there between them, the prospect of what was to come and what they would share, and Seamus didn't want –

"Me neither."

Seamus' glanced sharply towards Dean. For once, Dean looked almost as awkward and embarrassed as Seamus felt. Colour touched his cheeks and though he still stared at Seamus, it seemed to be with a struggle through his own discomfort.

Seamus stared, blinking slowly, his embarrassment faded before his surprise. "Wait. So you mean you never -?"

"No, never."

"Not even -?"

"No."

They stared at one another for a moment before, quite against his will, Seamus blurted out, "But _why_?"

Dean didn't retaliate with his own demand of the same kind. Instead he simply shrugged and reached out to take hold of Seamus' hand. "I don't know," he said quietly, gaze locked upon their interlaced fingers. "Maybe I somehow knew that she wasn't the one I was supposed to be with?"

The awkwardness hadn't entirely faded after that, but something had changed between them. And Seamus… Seamus had liked Wayne. He'd liked him a lot. But at that moment, he was very glad that they'd waited.

Awkwardness and uncertainty had no place between Seamus and Dean anymore. No embarrassment, because it simply felt so right. Seamus drew Dean to his feet as he climbed off him, pulling him after him towards the bed they shared and pausing only when the urge to reach for him, to lock his hands around the back of Dean's head and draw him down into another kiss, became too overwhelming.

They knew one another. They knew what felt good, and as Seamus relieved Dean of his nightclothes and Dean of Seamus', he grazed his lips peppered kisses on Dean's face, his neck where he could reach, his collarbones. He dragged Dean to the bed in what was only a brief pause to sit before wrapping himself around him again. He drew his fingers over Dean's belly in a feather-light touch, along his spine in a way that elicited a luxurious shiver, his tongue curling along the length of Dean's jaw and tasting him as Dean muffled a moan as though it were the most appreciated gift he could possibly have given.

And Dean touched him in turn. His clever fingers dancing across every place that made Seamus shiver, tugging gently at the hair at his nape and impressing nipping kisses on his ear that always made Seamus' breath catch in his throat. Dean was the one that fumbled distractedly for the nightstand and the little bottle within, that drew back across the bed until he was leaning against the headboard and pulled Seamus after him. Seamus obliged, straddling him once more and leaning over Dean to sink into another deep kiss as Dean clutched him to him, their mirroring arousals caught between them.

He shivered slightly as cool, wet fingers drew along his thigh, curving around his back and to his buttocks. When Dean slipped a finger into him, he caught his breath against a groan that wouldn't let itself be silenced, before diving into Dean's mouth once more.

It was familiar. The entirety of it, from the feel of Dean against him to the gentle caresses of his fingers as the pressed into him slowly one, then two, then three, was all familiar, and yet none the less for that familiarity. Seamus loved it. He loved Dean in every way, even when, at times, Dean would step out of himself to where Seamus couldn't reach him. When he didn't understand at times what Seamus himself needed, or why he didn't like to Heal himself when an 'incident' happened. Seamus wouldn't explain it to him, because he didn't want to upset Dean, just as Dean didn't try to explain in return. Maybe someday. Someday, the time for explanation would come. But not yet.

"Dean," Seamus murmured into his lips, then had to pause as Dean's finger twisted within him and he fought another moan. Gasping slightly, Seamus blinked his eyes open and met Dean's heavy-lidded gaze. "Dean, could you -?"

"Alright?" Dean breathed into his lips.

"You don't have to ask every time, like."

"I want to. I like to. Because," Dean paused to press his lips against the side of Seamus' neck. "I don't want to hurt you."

It meant something, those words. It meant more than their simplicity, because Seamus knew that Dean understood he didn't really feel it. That much of the time, pain didn't touch him at all. That Dean still worried, was still careful and gentle and took things slowly, meant a great deal. Dean probably understood better than anyone else who didn't feel it personally too.

"I know," Seamus said, locking a hand around Dean's head and dragging his lips back to his own. "But you won't," he murmured against them. "You never do."

Reaching down between them, Seamus grasped Dean's hardened arousal in a slow, squeezing clasp that urged Dean to catch his breath and rock his head back against the headboard with a groan. He was warm and slick with his own fluid, and with an adjustment above him, Seamus drew him inside himself.

Dean hands grasped Seamus' thighs as he slowly sunk down upon him. Their breaths caught synchronously and Seamus found his arms wrapping around Dean as he pressed himself against him, groaning beneath the thick heat of him as he pressed inside of him until he was fully seated. Dean's hands clasped him as, breath heavy, he paused to catch himself.

Seamus blinked hazily down at him through bleary eyes. He saw the frown on his forehead, the wrinkle of pleasure. Seamus leaned over him once more, easing into the stretching sensation that flooded him, and pressed another kiss on Dean's open mouth. Sinking into pleasure, into the abandon of sex… it would only be a temporary respite from what they knew they would have to do that day, what all of their friends would be doing on such a day. But just for that moment, Seamus lost himself.

Rocking his hips, he moaned himself as the feeling of Dean inside him. It felt good. It felt _so_ good, and even better for the fact that it was with Dean. Seamus didn't think he'd ever disregard the importance of that simple yet unbelievable fact.

Dean adjusted his grasp upon him and, slowly at first, then with increasing rhythm, bucked into him. Seamus dropped his forehead to Dean's shoulder, gasping against his skin as he reached for himself and grasped his own arousal. The feeling of Dean inside of him, of the sporadic bursts of pleasure as his length invoked a deep pleasure that sent sparks shooting to his brain, sent his toes to curling, was an intoxicating mixture of sensations that Seamus lost himself to.

In bare minutes, the warmth pooling in his groin was a flood of intensity. Dean's gasps as he breathed into Seamus' ear, his murmured, nearly unintelligible repetitions of Seamus' name, only added to that intensity. When Dean shifted, grasped Seamus' waist and rocked him backwards to fall flat against the mattress, following after him to press on top of him, Seamus let him. He let him raise one of Seamus' legs, grasping Dean's bicep to steady himself, before losing himself to the mounting pleasure as Dean began to thrust into him in earnest.

Seamus didn't care that he didn't last long. It felt impossibly good, but it hardly mattered. When he felt the heat inside of him rise to an uncontainable level, when his limbs trembled and he could feel the desperation for fulfilment almost radiating off Dean, it was almost a blessing to let it go. As he felt Dean snap into his hips with a jerking thrust, heard him cry out as a warm wetness flooded into him – as his hand curled around his arousal beneath the squeezing pressure of Dean's own fingers, Seamus gave himself over to the moment. Head thrown back and gasping he lost himself in a firework of pleasure.

Waves of warmth and colour rippled over Seamus as Dean rode out his own release before slowly, almost gently, sinking on top of him. He was gasping, Seamus heard, or maybe that was Seamus himself. Not that it mattered. Just as it didn't matter that they lay the wrong way on the bed, that the pillows had fallen to the floor. That they had left Dean's paints and brush unattended and discarded before his depictions of the nightmares that haunted him. That, within two hours, they would be meeting up with their friends for a memorial celebration of what at times felt like had only happened yesterday yet other times a whole century ago.

Seamus wrapped himself around Dean as he felt him slip out of him, curling around him as he felt Dean's arms close around him in turn. The sleepy warmth and lethargy was only physical; it didn't withhold the drifting passage of his thoughts. Seamus didn't want to go that day. He didn't want to see faces twisted in mourning, or worse, those that mourned yet felt the need to wear a smile for the world. He didn't want to be forced to remember what he remembered every day anyway, what at times rendered him silent or, more often, a babbling mess of words that Seamus himself didn't truly hear.

Burrowing into Dean in the thrumming aftermath of release, he sighed heavily into Dean's shoulder. There was a time and a place for conversations, but… even if it wasn't now, Seamus found himself speaking. "I don't really want to go today."

Dean shifted slightly. Seamus felt his leg hook around Seamus' own, toes grazing along his calf slightly in what could have been an unconscious motion except that Seamus had felt him do just that just as deliberately before. As a comfort, he did it, and it was comforting. Almost as much as Dean's sigh and nod as he pressed his cheek into the side of Seamus' head. "I know. Me neither."

"Parvati's going to cry."

"Yeah."

"And Hannah will start hating herself again for not doing more."

"She will."

"And Wayne's not going to speak all morning except to say that he should have been there to help."

"I know."

Seamus huffed his own a sigh. He knew all of it too. He knew how Harry himself, the Chosen One and their Saviour, would wear an expression of utter blankness. How the families of those lost would gather with pale faces and downcast eyes that didn't quite hide their tears. The students who had been there, faces familiar and unfamiliar, would all be wearing expressions of like-minded sobriety and regret.

Seamus knew that. He knew it and regretted it himself. But more than anything, he regretted that they had to go. There was no forgetting the war, and there were expectations placed upon those who'd survived. Expectations by the public, by the Ministry, by the anniversary attendants themselves.

"I don't really want to go, like," Seamus repeated in a mumble. "And neither do you."

"No," Dean murmured in reply.

"I vote we give it a miss."

"It's a terrifyingly competent council that reaches a unanimous verdict so quickly."

Seamus couldn't help but chuckle at that, even if the circumstances weren't really funny. Even if he didn't really find them funny himself. He tipped his head to peer up at Dean who, as he often found him, was already looking down at him. "A council? I think you mean a dictatorship, like."

"You make a pretty good dictator."

"I do, yeah?"

They didn't speak after that. There wasn't really anything else to be said. Seamus knew they would go, because they always did. Just as he knew that, though he might dislike the act of going itself, he needed it. He needed it as much as the next person. It provided a strange kind of catharsis itself, one that Seamus hadn't expected but appreciated nonetheless.

The war was over, but it was far from done with them. Seamus knew that. He knew that everyone else knew it too. Squeezing his arms around Dean once more, he burrowed into his even more deeply. At least they didn't have to continue to fight it alone.

* * *

A/N: The end! That's actually, finally the end! After, what, 18 weeks, it's finished!

Thank you so, so much to everyone who has taken the time to read. Even more of a heartfelt thank you to those who've taken the time to review. I can't thank you enough for your support and encouragement, and for taking a chance with this story. If you get the time, I'd really love to hear from you to know your thoughts.

Thanks!


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